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A material history of 15th-17th century paper used for
Icelandic handwritten and printed texts from
production to use and reuse

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Call for Papers: 8th International Conference on Watermarks in Digital Collections
The Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic StudiesReykjavik, Iceland 19-20 June, 2025 During the last decades, printed catalogues of...
Silvia Hufnagel
Jan 152 min read
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Use and Reuse of Paper in the Pre-Industrial World
On 27-28 August people from ten institutions in seven different countries (on two continents) convened in Cork, Ireland, to present their...
Silvia Hufnagel
Sep 19, 20243 min read
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Behind the Scenes
Together with our cooperation partners from the National and University Library of Iceland and our external contractor from the...
Silvia Hufnagel
Feb 16, 20241 min read
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Call for Papers: Use and Reuse of Paper in the Pre-Industrial World
We are very excited to share this Call for Papers for a colloquium that we are jointly organising with the University College Cork,...
Silvia Hufnagel
Jan 15, 20242 min read
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It's Christmas!
Seasonal greetings
Silvia Hufnagel
Dec 20, 20231 min read
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Quire structures, watermarks and felt- and sieve-sides
For our Life of Paper project we investigate, among other aspects, the production of manuscripts, particularly through analyses of quire...
Silvia Hufnagel
Oct 18, 20232 min read
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Quire signatures, watermarks and repair reports
Today we’ll introduce a paper manuscript that puzzled us for quite a while: Reykjavík, The Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies...
Silvia Hufnagel
Aug 15, 20232 min read
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New publication: Paper Stories
A few weeks ago our book Paper Stories – Paper and Book History in Early Modern Europe was published. It is based on the conference that...
Silvia Hufnagel
May 15, 20232 min read
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Visualising the physical structure of manuscripts: VisColl
by Lotte Devoldere For our Life of Paper project, we are using the VCEditor, a software that allows us to visualise individual manuscript...
Lotte Devoldere
Apr 17, 20232 min read
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Quire structures, watermarks and manuscript production
An important part of Life of Paper is the analysis of quire structures* in combination with watermark analysis and textual contents of...
Silvia Hufnagel
Feb 28, 20232 min read
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Þorlákur and Cardboard
Happy Þorláksmessa, merry Christmas and a very festive season! The 23rd December is known as Þorláksmessa, the Mass of St Þorlákur who is...
Silvia Hufnagel
Dec 23, 20222 min read
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Þorláksmessa and Þorlákur's Bible
Today, Þorláksmessa, the Mass of St Þorlákur, is celebrated in Iceland. Born in Hlíðarendi in 1133, Þorlákur Þórhallsson was ordained as...
Silvia Hufnagel
Dec 23, 20212 min read
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Paper and Parchment
When paper was on the rise and began to supplant parchment, some manuscripts were made of both materials, paper and parchment. In these...
Silvia Hufnagel
Nov 17, 20212 min read
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Weapons of Steel vs Weapons of Paper and Ink
In my last blog entry I wrote about the paper uses of the last Catholic bishop of Skálholt, Ögmundur Pálsson, and of his Lutheran...
Silvia Hufnagel
Jul 15, 20212 min read
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Paper, a Catholic Bishop and His Lutheran Successor
The rise of paper in Iceland is connected to several bishops. In this post, I will focus on two bishops of Skálholt: Ögmundur Pálsson,...
Silvia Hufnagel
Jun 20, 20213 min read
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Lost Books
In the recent online conference Care & Conservation of Manuscripts 18, my colleague Guðvarður Már Gunnlaugsson gave a lecture on lost...
Silvia Hufnagel
Apr 20, 20212 min read
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Paper and Parchment Recycling
Early modern paper was made of rags, as I have written in the last blog entry, and was thus a true recycling product. Even though the...
Silvia Hufnagel
Feb 15, 20212 min read
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The Stuff that Paper is Made of
I was once asked why there have been no paper mills in Iceland. I started explaining that there was hardly any linen clothing available,...
Silvia Hufnagel
Jan 15, 20212 min read
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Book Storage in Iceland
Encouraged by some recent twitter threads, I conducted a short survey of book storage. In continental monasteries in the twelfth century,...
Silvia Hufnagel
Oct 20, 20202 min read
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Holiday reads for paper enthusiasts
Dear all, now that the summer with potential holidays has arrived, I compiled a short list of books that will make great holiday reads...
Silvia Hufnagel
Jul 15, 20202 min read
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