One year ago I wrote about the oldest paper charters and manuscripts of Iceland, and this blog post is about the watermark that I found in *the* oldest Icelandic charter.
AM Dipl. Isl. Fasc. X, 6 contains a sales contract. Chieftain Þorvarður Loptsson ríki (the Wealthy, c. 1410-1446) sold Gunnsteinn Jónsson the farm Leyningur in Eyjafjarðarsýsla, North Iceland (c. 40km south of Akureyri). In return, Gunnstein sold Þorvarður the farm Vogar at lake Mývatn (c. 80km east of Akureyri). The contract is dated 13 September 1437 and was written at Möðruvellir in Eyjafjörður, where Þorvarður lived.
Þorvarður was, as his nickname suggests, a very affluent man and is today known for various reasons, one of them being his active involvement in the drowning of Bishop Jón Gereksson. Margrét Vigfúsdóttir* declined the marriage offer of the bishop's son, who then set fire to the farm house of Ívar Hólmur, Margrét's brother who perished in the flames. Margrét was able to escape the fire and promised to marry the man who avenged her brother's death. She kept her promise and married Þorvarður in 1436. Unfortunately, Þorvarður passed away in 1446.
The watermark in the charter is only fragmentary, and although I first believed that it was the top of the Basle Staff, it turned out that it was the tail of a dragon (read about it here). It is presumably a vertical, detached dragon without additional motifs. There are various entries in the Wasserzeichen-Informationssystem of such dragons. They are located in the region between Utrecht and Arnhem, close to the river Rhine in today's Netherlands, for the years 1351-1451, though mostly 1411-1431.
It is unclear how the paper with our dragon watermark ended up in Iceland. The papermakers could have sold it to English merchants, who in turn sold it in Iceland. But considering the evidence that in 1423 Michael Jónsson, a Norwegian priest, wrote the draft of a paper charter at Möðruvellir, Þorvarður's home, it seems more likely that Michael had bought it in Norway from German Hansa merchants and brought it along to Iceland, and that Þorvarður used some left-over paper from Michael.
* Today, Margrét is well known as patron and owner of several manuscripts, for example AM 343 a 4to, a parchment manuscript containing mythical-heroic and chivalric sagas.
Further Reading
Diplomatarium Islandicum: Íslenzkt fornbréfasafn, ed. Jón Sigurðsson et al., 16 vols. Copenhagen, 1857-1972; IV, 303-08, n. 365 and 570-571, n. 610.
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