Flateyjarbók

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Initial “I” from the Flateyjarbók manuscript.

The Flateyjarbók is the most extensive collection of manuscripts from the early days of Iceland. This consists of a total of 225 folio sheets, of which 202 sheets date from the 14th century and 23 sheets were added in the 15th century. The manuscript collection contains some poems and several more extensive prose texts, including saint legends (also known as sagas in Icelandic) and Icelandic sagas .

content

The composite manuscript contains the following texts:

The two Óláfs ​​sagas contain a whole series of stories ( Þáttr ) such as the Hálfdanar þáttr svarta ok Haralds hárfagra and the Eymundar þáttr hrings , which are only contained in this manuscript. If at least some of the shorter texts were probably already available in a collective manuscript, then up to 44 different manuscripts could have been used.

history

Beginning of the "Óláfs ​​saga hins helga" with the depiction of his death in Stiklestad.

The flateyjarbók was made between 1387 and 1390 for Jón Hákonarson, a wealthy farmer. It is believed that it was originally intended as a gift to King Olaf Hákonarson . According to this, only the two Óláfs ​​sagas should be included, but more detailed than in all templates, in that information was compiled from the templates available to the author. In addition, the Eiríks saga viðförla is said to have been adopted.

author

It was possibly written in Reynistaðaklaustur in Skagafjörður or in its vicinity, possibly also in Víðitalstunga in the Vestur-Húnavatnssýsla district , a farm that the great farmer Jón Hákonarson (1390 - between 1398 and 1416) had acquired in 1385. The Þingeyrar monastery is also mentioned as a possible place of writing. In any case, the book must have been created in or in the immediate vicinity of a monastery with an extensive library.

An author's note on the back of the first sheet identifies Jón Þórðarson as the first author. He wrote “fra Eiríki viðførla ok Ólafssögurnar báðar”. Jón is mentioned as a witness in a letter from 1384 written in Víðitalstunga. In 1394, the Annals of Flateyarbók record a return of Jón from Norway after a six-year stay there, from which it can be inferred that he traveled to Norway in 1388.

When King Olaf died in 1388, the work was initially interrupted. The rest, apart from the 25 inserted sheets, wrote in 1389 on the basis of a new objective by the priest Magnús Þorhallsson. He also painted all the illuminations and initials . Magnús also wrote the foreword and the first 10 columns on the three arcs that preceded the text. Since the capture of Albrecht III in his foreword . is mentioned by Mecklenburg, he could have inserted these arches in 1389 at the earliest.

Later addition

The arches inserted in the 15th century contain the "Magnús saga hins goða" (about Magnus the good and Harald III. Harðráða ) and various poems (Þættir). They must have been written before 1498, as part of it was incorporated into another work written in 1498. The later addition of these texts is attributed to the fact that the original commissioner already had them in a different manuscript, but not the later owner of the 15th century. He is identified with the feudal lord (Hirðstjóri) Þorleifur Björnsson (tenure 1481–1484), who lived in Skarð á Skarðsströnd (Skarð on Skarðstrand in the district of Dalasýsla ), but in 1480 after the death of his mother the island of Flatey (literally: flat island) in Fjord Breiðafjörður in northwest Iceland. His grandson Jón Björnsson , who owned Flatey, gave the book to his grandson Jón Finnson . Several scribes have worked on the inserted pages with different orthography and other illuminations.

The way to the Copenhagen Royal Library

In 1651, the Bishop Brynjólfur Sveinsson von Skálholt requested with the consent of the Danish King Frederick III. from Denmark, Norway and Iceland that all residents of Iceland should transfer old manuscripts either in the original or as a copy to the Danish Krone, either as a gift or for a price. The owner of the book at the time, Jón Finnsson , lived on Flatey. Hence the name of the book Flateyjarbók = Book of Flatey. Jón Finnsson was initially reluctant to publish the valuable book, which is why Bishop Brynjólfur Sveinsson personally visited him. Finally he agreed to hand the book over to the Danish king in exchange for land.

In 1656 the book was transferred to the royal library " Det Kongelige Bibliotek " in Copenhagen . There it had the designation “Gl. kgl. sml. 1005 fol. I-II ". In the 18th century the manuscript was bound in two large volumes. It was loaned to the historian Þormóður Torfason (1636–1719), who used it for his 1711 history of Norway, in Norway for only a few years . He translated the Flateyjarbók into Danish. This translation is still in Copenhagen. But Flateyarbók was soon considered to be the library's greatest treasure, so that for security reasons it was not loaned to the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago, although the USA offered the safest warship for transport.

Source value

The Flateyjarbók was not always held in high esteem. It has long been considered an unreliable source of inferior value. The manuscript collector Árni Magnússon (1663–1730) was the first to discover a number of historical inaccuracies. On September 4, 1690, he wrote to Þormóður that the Flateyarbók was full of nonsense, false traditions and chatter. This judgment by an authority recognized at the time, who also took this view in further letters to her colleague Páll Vídalín (1667–1727), significantly reduced the reputation of the font.

Edition

The Flateyjarbók manuscript collection was published many times, and Finnur Jónsson (1858–1934) wrote a large treatise on it in which he examined the content, especially of those pieces of text that were not otherwise available. But none of the editions were satisfactory in terms of text philology.

The return to Iceland

This manuscript was created on the basis of the Danish law dansk lov nr. 194 of May 26, 1965 § 2 and of the contract between Denmark and Iceland of July 1, 1965 on July 21, 1971, together with other manuscripts, handed over to the Icelandic state for safekeeping in the Stofnun Árna Magnússonar (Arni Magnusson Institute) of the University of Iceland in Reykjavík .

Today's appreciation

The Flateyjarbók was written in the heyday of Icelandic writing. Special emphasis was placed on the aesthetics of the typeface and the arrangement of the text on the respective sheet.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Westergård-Nielsen p. 434.
  2. ↑ Simek / Pálsson p. 93.
  3. ↑ Würth p. 172.
  4. ↑ a b Würth p. 173.
  5. ↑ a b Würth p. 171.
  6. ↑ Magnús is only mentioned as a witness in a document dated April 2, 1397 about a land purchase in Snæfellsnes . Otherwise you don't know anything about him.
  7. ↑ Westergård-Nielsen p. 435.
  8. ↑ a b Westergård-Nielsen p. 432.
  9. ↑ Westergård-Nielsen p. 433.
  10. ↑ "Flateyiarboc, sem full er med þvætting, traditiones falsas og mælge." Quoted in Westergård-Nielsen p. 433.
  11. ^ Finnur Jónsson: Aarbøger for nordisk Oldkyndighet og Historie. 1927 pp. 139-190.

literature

  • Corpus Codicum Islandicorum Medii Aevi. Volume 1: Flateyjarbók (Codex Flateyensis) Ms. No 1005 fol. in the old royal collection in the Royal Library of Copenhagen. Introduction by Finnur Jónsson. Levin & Munksgaard, Copenhagen 1930, facsimile edition.
  • Kolbrún Haraldsdóttir: For which recipient was the Flateyjarbók originally designed? In: Opuscula . tape 13 , 2010, p. 1-53 .
  • Rudolf Simek , Hermann Pálsson : Lexicon of old Norse literature. The medieval literature of Norway and Iceland (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 490). 2nd, significantly increased and revised edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-520-49002-5 , p. 93.
  • Christian Westergård- Nielsen: Nogle bemærkninger til Flatøbogens historie . In: Lars Svensson (Ed.): Nordiska Studier i Filologi och lingvistik. Festskrift tillägnad Gösta Holm on 60-årsdagen 8 July 1976 . Studentlitterarur AB, Lund 1976, ISBN 91-44-12851-7 , p. 432-444 .
  • Stefanie Würth : Flateyjarbók . In: Heinrich Beck et al. (Hrsg.): Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde . 2nd Edition. tape 9 : Fidel - Peacelessness . de Gruyter, Berlin et al. 1995, ISBN 3-11-014642-8 , p. 171-174 .

Web links

Commons : Flateyjarbók  - collection of images, videos and audio files