In the recent online conference Care & Conservation of Manuscripts 18, my colleague Guðvarður Már Gunnlaugsson gave a lecture on lost Icelandic manuscripts from the Arnamagnæan Collection. A small number of manuscripts was catalogued at some point or analysed when preparing editions but have since been lost.
We can compile a similar list over lost paper books or manuscripts that were recorded in inventories of Icelandic churches in the sixteenth century. Several inventories specified codices as having been made of paper.
Here are some examples: St John the Baptist, the church at Staðarhóll í Saurbæ had an „ymnarius med pappijri“ (hymnal made of paper) in the first half of the sixteenth century. In the 1520s or 1530s, the church at Lundarbrekka í Bárðardal received „Eina goda messuBok lesandi med papijr. heldur hvn j krijngum äred“ (a good missal without musical notation, made of paper, covering the whole church year); in 1547 a „hymnarius meth papijr“ (hymnal made of paper) is listed in the church inventory. In 1553, a „messobok nyia med pappir fyrir iiic“ (a new missal, made of paper, worth 3h) was donated to the church at Ás í Kelduhverfi. Similar entries can be found in other inventories.
The breviary in this image was printed under the auspices of Bishop Jón Arason (1484-1550), the last Catholic bishop of Iceland, at Hólar in 1534. Bishop Jón gave 17 copies of it to the church at Hólar. The breviary is said to be the first printed book in Iceland and survives only in two fragments, kept at the National Library of Sweden, Stockholm.
Most of the paper codices listed in the inventories were hymnals and missals, some of which contained the canon.* Unfortunately, it is often unclear if the codices were printed books or handwritten manuscripts. And sadly, the codices will almost certainly have perished.
Do you know of any extant paper missals or hymnals from Icelandic churches?
Further reading:
Guðbrandur Jónsson, Dómkirkjan á Hólum í Hjaltadal: Lýsing íslenzkra miðaldakirkna. Vol. 5-6 of Safn til sögu Íslands og íslenzkra bókmenta að fornu og nýju. Reykjavík: Gutenberg, 1919-1929.
Jón Sigurðsson, Jón Þorkelsson, Páll Eggert Ólason and Björn Þorsteinsson, eds., Diplomatarium islandicum. Íslenzkt fornbréfasafn; sem hefir inni að halda bréf og gjörninga, dóma og máldaga og aðrar skrár, er snerta Ísland eða íslenzka menn. 16 vols. Copenhagen: Hið íslenzka bókmenntafjelag, 1857-1972.
*I thank Svanhildur Óskarsdóttir for her help with the topic!
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