Möðruvallabók

A page of Njáls saga from Möðruvallabók

Möðruvallabók (Icelandic pronunciation: [ˈmœðrʏˌvatlaˌpouːk]) or AM 132 fol is an Icelandic manuscript from the mid-14th century, inscribed on vellum. It contains the following Icelandic sagas in this order:

Many of those sagas are preserved in fragments elsewhere but are only found in their full length in Möðruvallabók, which contains the largest known single repertoire of Icelandic sagas of the Middle Ages.

The manuscript takes its name from Möðruvellir [ˈmœðrʏˌvɛtlɪr̥], the farm in Eyjafjörður where it was found.[1] In 1628, Magnús Björnsson signed his name in it with the location.[2] It was brought to Denmark in 1684 by Magnús Björnsson's son Björn, who gifted it to Thomas Bartholin. Árni Magnússon acquired the manuscript in 1691 after Bartholin's death, and it was incorporated into the Arnamagnæan Collection. It was returned to Iceland in 1974 after the collection's division into an Icelandic and a Danish section.[1] Margaret Clunies Ross has asserted that the saga was arranged geographically,[3] and Emily Lethbridge has shown that Njáls saga could have been treated as a separate text from the rest of the extant manuscript.[4]

References

  1. ^ a b Sarah M. Anderson, "Introduction: 'og eru köld kvenna ráð'", Cold Counsel: The Women in Old Norse Literature and Myth, ed. Sarah M Anderson and Karen Swenson, 2000, e-book ed. Hoboken, New Jersey: Taylor and Francis, 2013, ISBN 9781134821389, pp. xi–xv, p. xv, note 1.
  2. ^ Íslendínga sögur, udgivne efter gamle Haandskrifter af det kongelige nordiske Oldskrift-Selskab, 4 vols., OCLC 465745666, Volume 4, ed. Konráð Gíslason and Eiríkur Jónsson, Njála Volume 2, Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1889, p. 666 (in Danish)
  3. ^ Margaret Clunies Ross, The Cambridge Introduction to the Old Norse Icelandic Saga, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2010, p. 144.
  4. ^ Emily Lethbridge. "„Hvorki glansar gull á mér/né glæstir stafir í línum." Arkiv för nordisk filologi 129 (2014): 53-89.

Further reading


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