Gripla - 2023, Blaðsíða 213
“EYRSILFR DRUKKIT, ÞAT GERIR BANA” 211
tions of the texts of the six Old Norse medical books (from 1860–1931),
some accompanied by extensive introductions – an interest that seems to
have declined abruptly before and during World War II. The majority of
studies on the Old Norse medical corpus are thus a century old or more.
Finnur Jónsson’s 1912 monograph on medicine in the medieval north,
along with a medical section in his history of Old Norse literature, was
followed by Ingjald Reichborn-Kjennerud’s writings on the history of
medicine in the north, published in five parts from 1928.13 At the same
time, Danish scholars took great interest in the Danish medical author
Henrik Harpestræng, whose texts were edited and published.14 As for
Old Norse medical books, scholarly publications have, since the middle
of the last century, mostly been limited to entries in encyclopaedias and
overviews, such as the comprehensive essay by Jón Steffensen in the series
Íslensk þjóðmenning.15 An essay on the lapidaries in AM 194 8vo (no. 4 in
Table 1) by Adèle Kreager was recently published, and Arngrímur Vídalín
writes on the scribe of the same manuscript and the part of it known as
Leiðarvísir.16 Little has been written specifically about AM 655 xxx 4to,
save Kristian Kålund’s discussion of it in relation to a later medical book,
AM 434 (no. 5 in Table 1).17
13 Finnur Jónsson, Lægekunsten i den nordiske oldtid, ed. Vilhelm Maar, Medicinsk-historiske
smaaskrifter (Copenhagen: Vilhelm Trydes forlag, 1912); Finnur Jónsson, Den oldnorske
og oldislandske litteraturs historie, 2 ed., 3 vols. Vol. II (Copenhagen: Gad, 1920–1924),
909–946; Ingjald Reichborn-Kjennerud, Vår gamle trolldomsmedisin, 5 vols., Skrifter ut-
gitt av det Norske Videnskaps-Akademi i Oslo, Hist.-Filos. Klasse (Oslo: Jacob Dybwad,
1928–1947).
14 Most important are Marius Kristensen’s editions of the herbal pharmacology in
Harpestræng. See also, e.g., the Latin text De simplicibus medicinis laxativis, ed. John William
Schibby Johnsson (Copenhagen: Vilhelm Priors Kgl. Hofbogshandel, 1914); Henrik
Harpestraeng, Liber herbarum, ed. Poul Hauberg (Copenhagen: Hafnia, 1936).
15 Jón Steffensen, “Alþýðulækningar,” in Alþýðuvísindi: Raunvísindi og dulfræði, ed. Frosti F.
Jóhannsson, Íslensk þjóðmenning VIII (Reykjavík: Þjóðsaga, 1990), 103–191. See also a
recent book aimed at the public by the folklorist Ólína Kjerúlf Þorvarðardóttir, Lífgrös og
leyndir dómar: Lækningar, töfrar og trú í sögulegu ljósi (Reykjavík: Vaka-Helgafell, 2019).
16 Adèle Kreager, “Lapidaries and lyfsteinar: Health, Enhancement and Human–Lithic
Relations in Medieval Iceland,” Gripla (2022); Arngrímur Vídalín, “Óláfr Ormsson’s
Leiðarvísir and Its Context: The Fourteenth-Century Text of a Supposed Twelfth-Century
Itinerary,” The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 117.2 (2018).
17 Kålund, Den islandske lægebog, 359–360, 379–384.