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logical record. This overview serves to better contextualise the subsequent
discussion, in which I summarise the presentation of stones in a selection
of Íslendingasögur, fornaldarsögur and riddarasögur.
The Old Norse Lapidary Tradition
Lapidaries are texts documenting precious stones, their physical differ-
ences and properties, their uses and their locations in the world. There are
three types of lapidary literature circulating in the medieval period, evinc-
ing a variety of approaches to how humans might find use and meaning in
the non-human world: the astrological lapidary, the scientific lapidary, and
the Christian symbolic lapidary.21 The latter two types were, judging from
manuscript evidence, the more popular. Indeed, we find evidence of both
of these types in manuscripts from fourteenth-century Iceland: AM 194
8vo contains a fragmentary Christian symbolic lapidary at ff. 24v–27r, and
a more comprehensive (though still partial) scientific lapidary at ff. 45v–
48v. These lapidaries are translations of two independent works by the
late eleventh-century Bishop Marbode of Rennes:22 the former fragment
is derived from an original Icelandic translation of Marbode’s Christian
Symbolic Lapidary in Prose datable to c. 1200 on linguistic grounds;23
the latter fragment is a prose translation of Marbode’s On Stones (De
Lapidibus), likely dating from the early thirteenth century.24 Marbode’s
De Lapidibus was a hugely influential work in the medieval lapidary genre,
synthesising lore from Gaius Julius Solinus (third c. AD), Isidore of Seville
(c. 560–636) and especially Damigeron-Evax (second c. AD), to provide a
practical guide to the therapeutic applications of stones.
Additionally, fragmentary translations of De Lapidibus are found in the
early fourteenth-century Hauksbók manuscript compilation (f. 34r)25 and
21 John Riddle (ed.), Marbode of Rennes’ (1035–1123) De Lapidibus, Considered as a Medical
Treatise with Text, Commentary and C. W. King’s Translation. Together with Text and
Translation of Marbode’s Minor Works on Stones (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1977),
xi. Henceforth De Lapidibus.
22 Clunies Ross, Skáldskaparmál: Snorri Sturluson’s ars poetica and Medieval Theories of
Language, The Viking Collection 4 (Odense: Odense University Press, 1987), 146.
23 Foote, “Icelandic Sólarsteinn,” 148.
24 Clunies Ross, Skáldskaparmál, 146.
25 On this manuscript, see Sverrir Jakobsson, “Hauksbók and the Construction of an
Icelandic World View,” Saga-Book 31 (2007): 22–38; Elizabeth Ashman Rowe, “Literary,
Codicological and Political Perspectives on Hauksbók,” Gripla 19 (2008): 51–76.
LAPIDARIES AND L Y F S T E I N A R