ICELANDIC SCRIBES SIGNED

Project "ICELANDIC SCRIBES" data sheet

The following table provides information about the project.

 Partnership

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 Project objective

While much work has been carried out on medieval (including Nordic) manuscripts, literary patronage, and reading culture, less attention has been paid to these issues after the Middle Ages. While the introduction of print in the 15th century certainly altered literary production throughout Europe, its influence is now understood as less definitive than was once thought, and in Iceland especially, people continued to copy books by hand until the early 20th century, keeping alive medieval scribal practices long after they had ended elsewhere.

By researching the creation of new copies of popular texts and their transmission in 17th-century Iceland, I will discover how the manuscripts associated with one man at the centre of an important scribal network are linked with both the small Icelandic community in which they were produced and the wider networks of literacy and reading cultures throughout early modern Scandinavia. My project will gain insights through study of the manuscripts themselves, their scribes and patron, and also the texts they transmit. As a cross-disciplinary investigation of the society and culture of post-Reformation Iceland, my work will advance our understanding of Icelandic literature and society, and bring new perspectives to the wider fields of socio-cultural history, the history of literacy, and the history of the book.

Doing my research at UCPH, which has an unbroken tradition of work on Icelandic texts and manuscripts back to the 18th century, will allow me to gain new skills through training in electronic textual editing, and to produce a digital edition of an early modern Icelandic manuscript in its entirety, making my work widely accessible to diverse audiences, alongside more traditional methods of dissemination. As Danish is a major research language in my field, living and working in Copenhagen, with the daily immersion in Danish language and culture, will also enhance my skillset and advance my career prospects in my field.

 Publications