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224 GRIPLA
botanical gardens where medicinal plants were grown at monasteries in
Iceland during the Middle Ages.70 Additionally, species of healing plants
that are not a part of the Icelandic flora have been identified.71 Further
archaeological research on this topic awaits, but these findings correspond
with the understanding of how contemporary European monasteries and
abbeys operated; some had large herb gardens with medicinal plants.72
AM 655 4to may very well have been produced in association with a
monastery, although this remains obscure. The scribe of another medical
manuscript, AM 194 8vo (no. 4 in Table 1, written in 1387), was a priest,
living in the vicinity of a monastery.73 The 655 scribe’s omission of the
initials implies a collaborative process in the production of the manuscript,
and therefore a potential association with a scribal centre or an illumina-
tor. However, book production in medieval Iceland was not centred on
mon astic institutions to the same extent as in Europe.74 Large estates of
wealthy families are thought to have been essential centres for literary
production, as are monasteries and cathedral schools.75 The scribes of
70 See Steinunn Kristjánsdóttir, Inger Larsson, and Per Arvid Åsen, “The Icelandic Medieval
Monastic Garden – Did It Exist?” Scandinavian Journal of History 39.5 (2014). See also,
on plants in medieval Nordic monasteries, Johan Lange, “Lægeplanter,” in Kulturhistorisk
leksikon for nordisk middelalder fra vikingetid til reformationstid, ed. Johannes Brøndsted et al.
(Copenhagen: Rosenkilde og Bagger, 1966), 88–90.
71 Inger Larsson, Per Arvid Åsen, Steinunn Kristjánsdóttir, and Kjell Lundquist, eds.,
Medeltida klostergrunder på Island – vegetation och flora, kultur- och relikväxter, samtida växt-
namn (Alnarp: Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet, 2012). See on some of the plants men-
tioned in AM 655 4to, such as wormwood (Artemisia), caraway (Carum carvi), pimpinella
(Sanguisorba officinalis, Sanguisorba alpina), plantain (Plantago) and sweet gale (Myrica gale),
in ibid., 51–80. See also on willow (Salix), opium poppy (Papaver somniferum), rue (Ruta
graveolens), sage (Salvia officinalis), mint (Mentha), and lovage (Levisticum officinale), in ibid,
Appendix 3, 8.
72 Park, “Medical Practice,” 616. It has been established that Skriðuklaustur monastery (1493–
1554) was a medical centre; see Steinunn Kristjánsdóttir, “Skriðuklaustur Monastery”.
73 See above and Kålund, Alfræði íslenzk, 54f.
74 Soffía Guðmundsdóttir and Laufey Guðnadóttir, “Book Production in the Middle Ages,”
in The Manuscripts of Iceland, ed. Gísli Sigurðsson and Vésteinn Ólason (Reykjavík:
Árni Magnússon Institute in Iceland, 2004), 54; Stefán Karlsson, “Íslensk bókagerð
á miðöldum,” in Íslenska söguþingið 28.–31. maí 1997: Ráðstefnurit, ed. Guðmundur J.
Guðmundsson and Eiríkur K. Björnsson (Reykjavík: Sagnfræðistofnun Háskóla Íslands
and Sagnfræðingafélag Íslands, 1998), 289–290.
75 For an overview of possible locations of book production in Iceland, see Haraldur
Bernharðsson, “Scribal Culture in Thirteenth-Century Iceland: The Introduction of
Anglo-Saxon ‘f’ in Icelandic Script,” The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 117.3
(2018): 282–285.