A great number of manuscripts were commissioned by ths powerful and wealthy Vatnsfjörður-family in seventeenth-century western Iceland. We aim to ascertain if there are even more manuscripts that were written for or by them.
The Westfjords were one of the cultural centres of post-medieval Iceland, and the origin of many manuscripts can be traced to this area. One family in particular was paramount in seventeenth-century Icelandic manuscript culture, that of Séra Jón Arason í Vatnsfirði. Today, there are over thirty manuscripts extant that were written or commissioned by him or other family members, most notably his son Magnús Jónsson í Vigur.
Séra Jón Arason (1606-1673) came from one of the wealthiest and most powerful families of Iceland, the Svalbarð-family; his father was one of the most powerful magnates of Iceland, Ari Magnússon í Ögri, and his mother, Kristín Guðbrandsdóttir, was the daughter of Bishop Guðbrandur Þorláksson (c. 1541-1627), the publisher of the Guðbrandsbiblía (1586), the first Bible printed in Icelandic. Jón was highly educated and went abroad to study at the University of Copenhagen. After his return to Iceland, he was made rector at the Latin school in Skálholt in southern Iceland but received the profitable vicarage at Vatnsfjörður in the Westfjords later. He was said to have been among the most erudite men of his time: he spoke several foreign languages, translated works from German and Danish, compiled annals and was an accomplished poet; we find many of his poems and hymns in manuscripts and books.
Jón’s wife, Hólmfríður Sigurðardóttir (1617-1692), came from an equally prominent and even wealthier family. She spent some of her childhood with her grandfather, Bishop Oddur Einarsson, at the Episcopal see in Skálholt and according to a poem about her family, she was very interested in literature.
It comes therefore as no surprise that several of Jón and Hólmfríður’s children were equally active in the cultural, and particularly literary, traditions of their time. Most notable of them is Magnús Jónsson (1637-1702) í Vigur, with whom more than forty manuscripts are connected in his role as scribe, patron, owner or author. Magnús was an avid scribe, poet and translator and commissioned a wealth of manuscripts. The – well educated – female offspring of the couple played an important role in Icelandic manuscript production and transmission, too. To name but one, Ragnheiður Jónsdóttir the younger (1646-1715) held a high position in society as the wife of a bishop; during her widowhood she educated several young girls and several extant manuscripts were in her possession.
There are more than thirty manuscripts that were either commissioned by Vatnsfjörður-family members or that we believe were commissioned by them. In our project “Paper Trails” we hope to bring more certainty to the latter manuscripts.
First, we will examine the watermarks of the manuscripts that were certainly commissioned by family members, for example Landsbókasafn – Háskólabókasafn Íslands, Lbs 235 fol., written in 1681-1682 by Jón Þórðarson for Magnús í Vigur. We then have to establish if the watermarks are common in Iceland at that time or if they occur mainly in Vatnsfjörður-manuscripts. We can do that by comparing them with watermarks from other Icelandic manuscripts and diplomas (see Paper History). Second, we will compare the watermarks of manuscripts whose Vatnsfjörður-connection we do not know for certain with the manuscripts of certain origin. If they are the same watermarks as the ones that appear mostly in Vatnsfjörður-manuscripts, we can ascertain the origin of these manuscripts with a much higher degree than hitherto and thereby contribute to the history of Icelandic post-medieval manuscript culture.
We will write some updates on this part of the project in due time, so stay tuned! You can also check out our twitter account!
Further reading:
Þórunn Sigurðardóttir. “Constructing Cultural Competence in Seventeenth-Century Iceland: The Case of Poetical Miscellanies.” In Mirrors of Virtue: Manuscripts and Print in Late Pre-Modern Iceland, edited by Margrét Eggertsdóttir and Matthew James Driscoll, 277-320. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2017.
Springborg, Peter. “Antiqvæ historiæ lepores: Om renæssancen I den islandske håndskriftproduktion i 1600-tallet.” Garðar 8 (1977): 71-88.
For information on the scribal network of Magnús Jónsson í Vigur, check out https://icelandicscribesproject.com/2018/04/, the website of Sheryl Werronen McDonald’s Marie-Skłodowska-Curie research project.
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