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not been identified as an independent text in any other tradition. In other
languages, the Quest has only been shown to exist in combination with
the Cross material. This independent transmission illuminates a unique
instance in a medieval vernacular when the Quest is afforded an afterlife
entirely separate from the Cross narrative. This study therefore contributes
not only to Old Icelandic studies, but also has implications for the study
of Adamic pseudepigrapha. A transcription of two texts of the otherwise
unedited Sethsvkæði is included in the appendix below.
The Quest of Seth for the Oil of Life
The Quest is a modern title given to the story in question by Esther
Quinn.8 Carl Unger edits the Old Icelandic Quest portion of AM 544 4to
(hereafter Hauksbók)9 and gives it the Latin title Origo Crucis.10 Theodor
Möbius also edits the Quest from Hauksbók but gives it the title Seths för
i Paradisum.11 As such, there has been no common practice for titling the
Quest. Within medieval Scandinavia, there is a tradition of two circulating
versions of the Quest: one in which Seth is given a twig from the tree in
Paradise, which can be found in Danish church paintings, and the one in
question, in which Seth is given seeds from the infamous apple, which is
found in Icelandic literature.
The prose Quest as is found in medieval Icelandic manuscripts can be
summarized as follows. After Adam and Eve’s expulsion from Paradise,
Adam, who is now 932 years old12 and on his death bed, asks their
youngest son, Seth, to go on a quest to Paradise to fetch the Oil of Life
8 Quinn does not address her name-giving and why she settled on The Quest of Seth for the
Oil of Life. She also refers to the tale as The Quest of Seth for the Oil of Mercy and The
Seth Legend throughout her 1962 study. For simplicity, I have chosen to use the title which
is also the title of her book-length study, The Quest of Seth for the Oil of Life (abr. Quest).
9 Copenhagen, Den Arnamagnæanske Samling, AM 544 4to.
10 Unger, I: 298.
11 Theodor Möbius, Analecta Norrœnna. Auswahl aus der isländischen und norwegischen
Litteratur des Mittelalters (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichsische Buchhandlung, 1877), 204–7.
12 Traditionally Adam is 930 years old when he dies, but he appears as 932 years old in
Hauksbók as well as AM 727 II 4to (text E in Overgaard), and AM 65a 8vo (text B1 in
Overgaard). Brian Murdoch notes that Adam also dies 932 years old in a medieval English
version of the Quest, in Murdoch, The Apocryphal Adam and Eve in Medieval Europe:
Vernacular Translations and Adaptations of the Vita Adae et Evae, 78.
THE “QUEST OF SETH”