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aspiciensbók as a very large Breviary, which must have helped solidify it
as the authoritative translation.74 Oleson’s analysis of later book lists in
195975 and 1960 continued to mention aspiciensbœkr, and to categorize
them as Breviaries, though by 1960 it is clear he was beginning to have
difficulty grappling with how to associate particular terms with particular
books. Under a long entry for aspiciensbók, after dealing with books identi-
fied by that term, he states:
There is little doubt, however, that breviaries as well as missals
are included under such titles as saungbækur, de tempore et de sanctis
bækur, vor-, sumar-, vetrar-, páska-, jólabækur, etc. [...] In my previous
articles I was inclined to list these books as missals (and indeed
some of them are missals), but I am now of the opinion that many
of these books were either breviaries or possibly contained the part
of the office sung by the choir.76
Apart from the first two terms, which were discussed earlier, the issue is
that books identified by season could conceivably be either Office or Mass
books, and because of their narrow scope should probably not be identified
with either the term Missal or Breviary, since both referred in a latemedieval
context to fairly complete compilations that were intended for the celebrant,
rather than the choir. Oleson’s final speculation is essentially a definition of
a standard latemedieval Antiphonal, and it is unclear why he did not con-
sider using the term. Unfortunately he died shortly after, in 1963, and did
not have a chance to continue developing his thoughts in this direction. It
remains however, that he was key in bringing the misidentification of aspic-
iensbók into English-language scholarship and in establishing it as part of the
most authoritative study of Icelandic book collections to date.
Guðbrandur’s definition continued its dominance through the 1990s,77
and the current online definition of the Dictionary of Old Norse Prose is
74 Oleson, “Book Collections of Mediaeval Icelandic Churches,” 503. Oleson does not deal
with cathedral or monastery books and so does not address frammistöðubók, since it is only
mentioned as existing at Hólar.
75 Oleson, “Book Collections of Icelandic Churches in the Fourteenth Century,” 111.
76 Oleson, “Book Collections of Icelandic Churches in the Fifteenth Century,” 92.
77 See Kristján Eldjárn and Hörður Ágústsson, Skálholt: Skrúði og áhöld (Reykjavík: Hið
íslenska bókmenntafélag, 1998), 289.
THE LOST LITURGICAL BOOKS OF ICELAND