Gripla - 2023, Blaðsíða 197
THE GENESIS OF A COMPOSITE 195
sewing hole sets can be distinguished: first, a set of v-shaped holes; second
a notched cut, possibly from the time between the seventeenth and nine-
teenth century; and, third, a set of holes stabbed with a needle or awl from
the middle of the twentieth century.47 The v-shaped stations, presumably
older than the other two sets, are also present in the seventeenth-century
paper addition. This could, for example, mean that the paper gathering was
added to an existing binding, using the same technique, or that the three
fourteenth-century production units were unbound until the fourth PU
was added, which would explain the substantial loss of leaves.
Loose gatherings were by no means uncommon during the Middle
Ages. They could be wrapped in a limp binding of some sort, occasionally
fixed to the wrapper with provisional fixtures.48 There are several holes
present in AM 239 fol. that could have been intended for quire tackets,
an intermediate fixture meant to stabilize a gathering during its handling.
Johann Peter Gumbert describes tackets as
[…] either loops of thread, or thin strips of parchment (often
rolled tightly so as to resemble pieces of string), the ends of
which are knitted [p. 301] or twisted together; they pass through
holes that go, in the fold, through all the bifolia of the quire.
They use two holes to make a loop, or one only and go over the
end of the quire to close the loop.49
Tackets could also be used for provisionally connecting quires to a limp
binding.50 In AM 239 fol., the holes appear mostly on the tail of leaves
in the first five quires, in what corresponds to PU1.51 Vasarė Rastonis
pointed out that some holes were potentially meant to be used in conjunc-
tion with a sewing station; however, given that the holes are irregular, it
47 I wish to thank Vasarė Rastonis, conservator at Stofnun Árna Magnússonar í íslenskum
fræðum, for providing me with this information.
48 J. A. Szirmai, The Archaeology of Medieval Bookbinding (Aldershot; Brookfield, VT:
Ashgate, 1999), 285.
49 Johann Peter Gumbert, “The Tacketed Quire: An Exercise in Comparative Codicology,”
Scriptorium 65 (2011): 300.
50 Szirmai, The Archaeology of Medieval Bookbinding, 287–90.
51 At the tail of fols. 9, 13, 14, 15, 29, 30 and 31, and at the tail and maybe the head of fols. 21,
22, 23 and 24.