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  • Writer's pictureSilvia Hufnagel

Paper Seals

Updated: Nov 4, 2022

Welcome back to Paper Trails’ blog! Part of the summer was spent in the manuscript vaults of Iceland, and we have returned with exciting findings, among them the earliest known use of paper in Iceland: a paper seal from 1420.

National Archives of Iceland, Leyndarskj. 6 (1 July 1420) backside (c) Silvia Hufnagel

For paper seals, a small amount of wax is dropped onto a letter or charter, a moistened slip of paper is put on top and the seal matrix is pressed onto the paper, resulting in a seal impression on the paper. Sometimes the plica, the folded bottom margin of the charter, is used instead of the slip of paper. Even if the wax crumbles away, the impression is left intact in the paper. It is difficult to ascertain when exactly paper seals came into use but presumably in the latter half of the fourteenth and the fifteenth century.


According to the article in Kulturhistorisk leksikon for nordisk middelalder, vol. 13, the oldest paper seals in Sweden are found on a letter of King Albert of Sweden dated 5 September 1364, with further examples from the early 1380s onwards. In Finland, the oldest paper seal is pressed onto a document from 1460. In Denmark it was first the royal family and other aristocrats that used paper seals, for example Queen Christina in 1485. In Norway the Bergen-kontor of the Hansa pressed a seal on paper on a document dated 7 August 1514, and the aristocrat and politician Olav Galle in Tønsberg on a document dated 1 August 1515.


In Iceland, we find paper seals on a letter that Bishop Jón Tófason (bishop of Hólar 1411-23) and other leaders of the country sent to King Erik of Pomerania from the Althing, dated 1 July 1420. Not only is this one of the oldest extant paper seals, it is also the earliest known use of paper in Iceland, as Stefán Karlsson noted in his Islandske originaldiplomer indtil 1540. The bishop’s large paper seal came off but is now in AM 217 8vo, fol. 69r, but five smaller seals are still attached to the letter.


Although paper seals were fairly common and are well-known among historians, there seems to be no survey of them. Do you know of any paper seals or studies thereof?


Further reading: Article "Papirsegl" in Kulturhistorisk leksikon for nordisk middelalder, vol. 13, 110-113.

Stefán Karlsson, ed., Islandske originaldiplomer indtil 1540: Tekst. Editiones Arnamagæanæ A 7. Copenhagen, 1963.

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