For our Life of Paper project we investigate, among other aspects, the production of manuscripts, particularly through analyses of quire structures (read more about it here and here). Some manuscripts are rather difficult to analyse, particularly multi-text manuscripts that were divided into single-text manuscripts by Árni Magnússon. We find irregular quire structures, bifoliums that were divided up and joined differently, multiple singletons hinged to bifoliums, etc.
Trying to reconstruct the original structure of multi-text manuscripts becomes easier when the they contain longer texts with regular quires. In these cases we can assume that the quires that contain both ends and beginnings of texts were the same size as the rest of the quires. We use the distribution of watermarks to reconstruct the original form of such a quire. This is easiest if we have watermarks with countermarks because singletons with the main mark must have formed a true bifolium with a singleton with the countermark. We ensure that pairs of watermarks and felt-sides and mould-sides are matched correctly.
One of the more difficult cases that we encountered so far is Reykjavík, The Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies AM 163 n fol., a manuscript from the second half of the seventeenth century that was originally part of a larger manuscript. It now contains 16 leaves; ff. 1 and 16 are additions by Árni Magnússon to accomodate the beginning of Kjalnesinga saga and the end of Jökuls þáttur Búasonar. Folio 1 forms a bifolium with the front pastedown, and f. 16 forms a bifolium with the back pastedown. Folios 2-7 form a ternio (a quire with three bifoliums), and at a first glance it seems that ff. 8-15 form a quaternio (a quire with four bifoliums), with the sewing thread visible between ff. 11 and 12. However, a closer analysis[1] of the distribution of watermarks, the felt and sieve sides and the sewing revealed that ff. 8-13 form a ternio, and that ff. 14-15 are singletons, stab sewn together, that may have originally formed the first two leaves of the following ternio that contained the end of Jökuls þáttur Búasonar and the beginning of another text. Thus, the original multi-text manuscript may well have contained a regular quire structure of ternios that was obfuscated in its later dissection.
Further reading
Beeke Stegmann. “Árni Magnússon’s rearrangement of paper manuscripts.” Ph.D. Thesis. University of Copenhagen, 2017.
[1] By Beeke Stegmann, Silvia Hufnagel and Vasarė Rastonis, proving once more the importance of interdisciplinary studies and team work.