June 2026: The saga author and his book

With regard to pre-modern Old Norse-Icelandic literary production, little has come down to us concerning when and how scribes carried out their work. It is, however, highly probable that, at least in the case of the monastic scriptoria in the Benedictine and Augustinian monasteries in Iceland, the procedures were similar to those in continental Europe or the British Isles at the same time. We know little so far about the processes of literary and manuscript production at the writing centres of Oddi or Haukdalur, which were attached to large-scale farm parsonages and were, for their time, probably rather secular. Nor have many details been handed down to us from contemporary texts regarding the pre-modern understanding of authorship and the relationship between the author and their book; as research in recent years has shown, modern or Romantic concepts of authorship have usually been adapted to medieval conditions in an ahistorical manner.

This research gap is not closed by the present article either, but it may at least shed some light on the understanding of the relationship between authorship and text held by 19th-century Icelandic pre-modern literary culture, which was not entirely dissimilar to Old Norse medieval literary culture.

Einar Bjarnason (4 July 1782 – 7 September 1856) was an extremely prolific scribe of manuscripts in the first half of the 19th century. Although he was probably a rather simple labourer and farmer, his contemporaries regarded him as a scholar when it came to matters of Old Norse-Icelandic literature and manuscript production. According to Handrit.is, he was a poet, author, informant, owner and scribe of manuscripts, and maintained a lively correspondence with colleagues.

In a manuscript now bearing the shelfmark ÍBR 15 4to, which Einar completed in February 1849, he writes on folio 1r a foreword styled as a colophon but which, in substance, precedes the main text like an incipit:

Þjóðverja sögur þessar í þremur bindum hripaði ég allar á einum vetri í flughasti á helgidagakvöldum og nóttum þegar aðrir sváfu því fyrir önnum sem ég á hendi hafði úti og inni gat ég ekki annan tíma brúkað til skrifta. Band og ritregla er víðast lík þeirri sem söguhöfundurinn hafði í sinni bók sem þessi er eftir ritin. Band brúkaði ég mér til flýtirs jafnvel þó ég sæi að það spillti leturgjörðinni í svo mikilli hraðskrift sem ég varð að hafa. Sumstaðar við landa staða og mannanöfn vantar áherslumerkin þar harður hljóðstafur á að vera en svo var nær alls staðar í frumritinu sem ég fyrir mér hafði. Vil ég því biðja þá sem bækurnar lesa eður eignast frá minni hendi að leiðrétta og umbæta þennan galla því aldrei mun ég orka að gjöra það sjálfur. Þann 12. febrúar 1849. Einar frá Starrastöðum.

(ÍBR 15 4to, 1r)

I scribbled down these German stories, in three volumes, all in a single winter, in a frenzy on holy-day evenings and nights while others slept, since, because of the work I had on hand indoors and outdoors, I could not find any other time for writing. The suprascript strokes for abbreviations and orthography are for the most part similar to those that the saga author used in his book from which this is copied. I used shorthand for the sake of speed, even though I could see it spoilt the script in the great haste I had to maintain. In some places, with geographical names and personal names, the diacritical marks are missing where a hard vowel?! should be, but this was the case almost everywhere in the original manuscript I had before me. I therefore ask those who read or acquire the books from me to correct and amend this flaw, because I will never have the energy to do it myself. 12th February 1849. Einar from Starrastaðir.

(My own translation, L.R.)

Einar refers here to three volumes containing German tales, one of which, ÍBR 15 4to, bears the colophon cited above and, on folio 2r, the title Fyrsti hlutur af Þjóðverja sögum. Skrifað að Starrastöðum árið MDCCCXXII (The First Part of the German Tales. Written in Starrastöðum in the year 1822). The two other volumes are, one may assume, Annar hlutur af Þjóðverjasögum(ÍBR 16 4to) and Þjóðverja-Søgur III (ÍBR 17 4to), both of which were also produced by Einar.

With regard to the production of the text, the colophon reveals that Einar Bjarnason did not regard the copying of this text as his main task, but rather other, unnamed duties on the farm of Starrastaðir and elsewhere. According to the colophon, he copied at night or on the evenings of holidays, that is, at times when the usual daily work was at a standstill. The fact that Einar actually regarded himself as a copyist rather than the author of the text he had transcribed is evident from the fact that he refers to the exemplum as the saga author’s book. Although Einar intended to copy this book, i.e. the exemplar, most likely a manuscript originating from the author’s own hand, – whose status as a medium remains unclear in the colophon up to this point – as faithfully as possible, the limited time available for copying forced him to use shorthand in places. However, this shorthand meant that the typography – and here Einar uses the printing-specific technical term leturgjörð for the typeface or font – was compromised. Both the previous mention of an author’s book and the technical reference to typography lead one to assume that Einar’s source must have been a printed book, possessing the degree of fixity characteristic of an author-based printed book. Yet in the following sentence, in which he refers to the omitted diacritics, he calls his source a manuscript. And this clear equating of book and manuscript is repeated in Einar’s concluding topical request that his errors be corrected, as he has no time to do so himself.

If one looks at the date on the title page, fol. 2r, and compares it with the date at the end of the colophon, fol. 1r, one might be led to believe that Einar took 27 years to copy out the volumes. Although the title page, ÍBR 15 4to, 2r, suggests that the text referred to above was transcribed 27 years earlier, this apparently took place at the same farm, namely Starrastaðir. And if one turns to fol. 2v in the manuscript ÍBR 15 4to, one finds a preface there signed with the initials J. E. These initials refer to Jón Espólín Jónsson, the most important chronicler and historian of the late 18th and early 19th centuries in Iceland. Einar worked very closely with Jón Espólín for a long time and copied many manuscripts on his behalf. The manuscript discussed here may well have been modelled on Þjóðverjasögur (ÍB 150 4to) by Jón Espólín, many of whose works were never published.

As the example discussed here shows, for Einar Bjarnason, the designation of a text’s material form as a “book” appears to have been linked neither to the actual conditions of production nor to the fixation of the text through attribution of authorship, with which it is often associated.

As the colophon shows, Einar seems to think that, on the one hand, a text written by the author – even if it exists only in copy form – can be improved by third parties without losing its authoritative status; on the other hand, it appears that a text can also be copied by hand with perfect fidelity to the original, even down to the typeface, unless one is using shorthand.