By Beeke Stegmann
As described in our previous blog post, we are systematically going through charter copies in the Arnamagnæan Collection in Reykjavík looking for reused paper from the 17th century. During that work we discovered a folded piece of paper wrapped around the documents with the shelfmark AM Dipl. Isl. Apogr. 116-129 (see image 1). Upon unfolding the paper, a watermark became visible that depicts the coat of arms of Thann, held by two lions, and with the initials “HS” below (see image 2). This watermark is not commonly found in Icelandic material, but we were able to trace it back to a paper mill in Thann in Alsace where it seems to have been produced around 1600.[1]
By the time Árni Magnússon wrapped charter copies into this piece of paper and wrote some notes on it in the beginning of the 18th century it was over 100 years old. Even though the paper shows no clear traces of earlier use, it seems somewhat unlikely that it had not been employed for anything previously but had just been laying around unused for such a long time. Since Árni frequently reused older paper for purposes such as charter wrappers and because the piece of paper seems to preserve only a part of a whole sheet, it is conceivable that Árni cut off this blank part from a sheet that, for example, may otherwise have carried earlier writing.
However, during our work with establishing the quire structure of AM 161 fol., a 17th-century manuscript, additional pieces of paper with the same Thann watermark showed up as part of the old binding. There, the paper was employed as front and back endleaves and does not carry any writing either. A clear connection to Árni Magnússon’s archival work is present, because that older binding was put in place after he divided a larger manuscript into several manuscripts, including this one.[2] That means, while we still do not know when or how Árni obtained this over 100-year-old paper, he appears to have had more than one sheet of it and used it for various custodial purposes.
[1] See Beeke Stegmann’s recent publication “Paper Use and Reuse in Early 18th-Century Iceland and Denmark”, in Paper Stories – Paper and Book History in Early Modern Europe, ed. Silvia Hufnagel, Þórunn Sigurðardóttir and Davíð Ólafsson, Materiale Textkulturen 38 (Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2023), 283-304; available online at: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783111162768-013/html (open access).
[2] See Beeke Stegmann, “Árni Magnússon’s rearrangement of paper manuscripts” (PhD Thesis: University of Copenhagen, 2016), 64-68.