A few days ago, on 13 November, we celebrated the 360th birthday of Árni Magnússon, the famous manuscript collector. We have previously written about his use and reuse of paper for wrappers of apographs and for note slips, and today we’ll add another interesting case of reused paper for Árni’s note slips.
AM 388 fol. contains documents from 1700-1704 that refer to the Westman Islands; the manuscript also contains many note slips written by Árni. While many of these slips are otherwise blank slips of paper, some of them are recycled paper, for example cut-up letters, and contain older text. On what is now f. 22r in AM 388 fol. we can read the address to Árni in French: “Monsieur | Monsieur Arne […]| Secretaire de l[…]| professeur de […] | a | Copenhague”, and on the verso side we find a notw with the year 1701 written in Árni’s hand. In that year, Árni was appointed professor of philosophy and Danish antiquities at the University of Copenhagen, so he presumably reused the letter rather quickly.
Two notes on ff. 15 and 71 stem from one leaf of paper. When we assemble the two notes digitally, we can read about an inspection of the redoubt near Kornhóll on the Westman Islands on 4 May 1704. After Árni had cut up the leaf into two slips, he made a short comment on the tithe on one slip and on “karði” (a type of rapier) on the other. On the note slip on f. 69v we find notes on rapiers again, leaving us with the impression that defence was rather important around 1700.
The paper slips of two notes on ff. 28 and 125 belonged together originally, too, and contain a map of the area between Mýrdalur and Núpuvötn (written “gnups vötn”, c. 20km west of Skaftafell) in the South of Iceland, drawn by Árni.
As you may know, Árni spent most of the years 1702-1712 in Iceland, surveying the land together with Páll Vídalín, and it seems likely that the two cut-up leaves of paper with the inspection of the redoubt and the map of the South-East of Iceland stem from this time. If he got the documents that now comprise AM 388 fol. during his survey in Iceland, he may have reused the paper leaves for his notes rather promptly. In other words, paper was reused quickly in the case of note slips in AM 388 fol.
Further reading:
Beeke Stegmann, “Paper Use and Reuse in Early 18th-Century Iceland and Denmark”, in: Paper Stories – Paper and Book History in Early Modern Europe, edited by Silvia Hufnagel, Þórunn Sigurðardóttir and Davíð Ólafsson, 283-304. Materiale Textkulturen 38. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2023. https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783111162768-013/html
Már Jónsson, Arnas Magnæus philologus (1663-1730). The Viking Collection 20. Odense: Odense University Press, 2012.
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