March 2025:
Don't judge a book by its cover

Lbs 400 4to is an Icelandic paper manuscript which, according to handrit.is, was written between 1770 and 1820 by an anonymous scribe. The very decoratively written text on the title page reads:

Sú

Elldsta Heims Speki

kóllud

Vølu=Spaa

Edur

Sæmundar Edda

Útskrifud úr

Böka Safne

PETRI JOHAN: RESENII

í Kaúpmannahöfn

A:Xti MDCLXXiii

[The oldest philosophy, called Völuspá or Sæmundar Edda, published from the library of Peder Hansen Resen in Copenhagen in the year of our Lord 1673]

With regard to the question of authorship constructions and discursively powerful actors in networks, the title page of Lbs 400 4to offers some interesting points. On the one hand, the title refers to the poem Völuspá as a philosophy; on the other hand, the poem is equated with something called Sæmundar Edda. Björn Jónsson á Skarðsá is said to have made a remark at the beginning of the 17th century that prompted Jón Guðmundsson lærði to mention a Sæmundar Edda in his Greenlandic Annals in 1623. This term, for which there is no known extra-linguistic reference - i.e. no actual text - to which it could refer, was also used by Arngrímur Jónson in letters to Ole Worm in 1637 and 1638, where Arngrímur Jónson equates the Sæmundar Edda with an „older Edda“.

Today it is generally assumed that it was Brynjólfur Sveinsson, who was ordained Bishop of Skálholt in 1639, who came into possession of a parchment manuscript around 1643, which we know today as GKS 2365 4to or Codex Regius of the Poetic Edda, as he assumed that this Edda was the work of Sæmundur fróði Sigfússon, an Icelandic scholar and clergyman from the 11th and 12th centuries. Brynjólfur Sveinsson, as Karl Friedrich Köppen explains in his Literarische Einleitung zur Nordischen Mythologie published in 1837, had a copy made of this manuscript and allegedly gave this copy the title Edda Sæmundar hins fróða. While this copy no longer exists today, the name Sæmundar Edda has survived. A connection between the paratextual title Sæmundar Edda and the text itself is therefore no longer found in manuscript sources, but is only a convention in print.

The present title page is thus a pars pro toto, in which the Völuspá as a single poem refers to the whole of the Poetic Edda or even appears to be the whole.

The title page of Lbs 400 4to follows the content of the title page Philosophia Antiquissima Norvego-Danica dicta Vøluspa alias Edda Sæmundi. Ex Bibliotheca Petri Joh: Resenii. Haffniæ. Anno Christi MDCLXXIII, which was translated from Latin into Old Norse-Icelandic, but in the present case omits the allegedly Norwegian-Danish context. This publication from 1673, which is an extended commentary on the Völuspá published by Resen in 1665, was, however, edited by Erasmus Bartholin, as the reverse of the printed title page indicates.

In the case of the copy in Lbs 400 4to, however, it is particularly noteworthy that the manuscript does not contain what is stated on the title page. Instead of Völuspá or a Sæmundar Edda, the text in Lbs 400 4to is a version of the Prose Edda which corresponds to the redaction of the Codex Wormianus, AM 242 fol. The first printed edition of Codex Wormianus was published in 1818 by Rasmus Kristian Rask under the title Snorra-Edda: ásamt Skáldu og þarmed fylgjandi ritgjördum, but the text written in Lbs 400 4to differs from the printed version, especially in terms of spelling, so it cannot be assumed that it served as a model. Resen also published a prose Edda edition under the title Edda. Islandorum an. Chr. 1215 islandice conscripta per Snorronem Sturlae Islandiae Nomophylacem nunc primum Islandice Danice et Latine ex antiquis codicibus M.SS. Bibliothecae Regis et aliorum in lucem prodit opera et studio Petri Johannis Resenii in Copenhagen, but this was published as early as 1665 and was not based on the Codex Wormianus, but on the so-called Laufás Edda (Edda Magnúsar Ólafssonar) from the early 17th century.

In the case of Lbs 400 4to you can clearly see that you should never judge the book by its cover, as nothing on the title page matches the content of the manuscript. But sometimes it is sufficient to simply turn the page, as it is stated on fol. 1v that the title page is a mistake: Titill þessar bocar er ranger fyrir þá Grein at hier er hvarki Vauluspá at finne né Semundar edda, [...] heldir er þetta eginlega Snorra edda oc Skálda.