The Old Icelandic Homily Book (Stock. Perg. 4to no. 15), also known as the Stockholm Homily Book, is one of two main collections of Old West Norse

sermon A sermon is a religious discourse or oration by a preacher, usually a member of clergy. Sermons address a scriptural, theological, or moral topic, usually expounding on a type of belief, law, or behavior within both past and present contexts. El ...

s; the other being the

Old Norwegian Homily Book The Old Norwegian Homily Book (AM 619 4to) is one of two main collections of Old West Norse sermons. The manuscript was written around 1200, contemporary with the other principal collection of sermons, the Old Icelandic Homily Book; together they ...

(AM 619 4to), with which it shares eleven texts.McDougall, D. (1993) "Homilies (West Norse)" in ''Medieval Scandinavia: An Encyclopedia'' ed. Pulsiano, P. and Wolf, K. pp. 290-2 Written in around 1200, and both based on earlier exemplars, together they represent some of the oldest examples of

Old West Norse Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlement ...

prose. The Old Icelandic Homily Book (OIHB) contains 62 texts and parts of texts,de Leeuw van Weenen, A. (1993) ''The Icelandic Homily Book : Perg. 15o in the Royal Library, Stockholm'' Reykjavík: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar á Íslandi, p. 7 50 of which are

homilies A homily (from Greek ὁμιλία, ''homilía'') is a commentary that follows a reading of scripture, giving the "public explanation of a sacred doctrine" or text. The works of Origen and John Chrysostom (known as Paschal Homily) are considered ex ...

.Óskarsdóttir, S. (2007) "Prose of Christian Instruction" in McTurk, R. ed. ''A Companion to Old Norse-Icelandic Literature and Culture'' Oxford: Blackwell Publishing pp. 338-53 For this reason it is better considered a homiletic hand-book rather than a

homiliary A homiliarium or homiliary is a collection of homilies, or familiar explanations of the Gospels. History Late Antiquity From a very early time the homilies of the Fathers were in high esteem, and were read in connection with the recitation of ...

. Further, the ‘homilies’ it contains, as with most Old Norse homilies, conform more closely to the definition of sermons. The other texts are wide-ranging and include excerpts from Stephanus saga, a translation of part of pseudo-Ambrose’s Acta Sancti Sebastiani, and a fragment of a text dealing with musical theory, amongst others.

History

Nothing of the history of the OIHB is known for certain until 1682 when it was bought by Jón Eggertsson for the Swedish College of Antiquities.de Leeuw van Weenen, A. (1993) ''The Icelandic Homily Book : Perg. 15o in the Royal Library, Stockholm'' Reykjavík: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar á Íslandi, p. 1 In 1789 it was moved, along with the other manuscripts of the college, to the

Royal Library of Sweden The National Library of Sweden ( sv, Kungliga biblioteket, ''KB'', meaning "the Royal Library") is Sweden's national library. It collects and preserves all domestic printed and audio-visual materials in Swedish, as well as content with Swedish ...

. The manuscript has been variously dated between the end of the 12th century and the middle of the 13th century, but it is now generally accepted that it was written ‘around 1200’.de Leeuw van Weenen, A. (1993) ''The Icelandic Homily Book : Perg. 15o in the Royal Library, Stockholm'' Reykjavík: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar á Íslandi, p. 3-4 Both the handwriting and

orthography An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation. Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and mos ...

confirm that the manuscript was written in

Iceland Iceland ( is, Ísland; ) is a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic Ocean and in the Arctic Ocean. Iceland is the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Iceland's capital and largest city is Reykjavík, which (along with its s ...

.de Leeuw van Weenen, A. (1993) ''The Icelandic Homily Book : Perg. 15o in the Royal Library, Stockholm'' Reykjavík: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar á Íslandi, p. 18

Description of the manuscript

The manuscript is written on 102 leaves of

parchment Parchment is a writing material made from specially prepared untanned skins of animals—primarily sheep, calves, and goats. It has been used as a writing medium for over two millennia. Vellum is a finer quality parchment made from the skins of ...

, bound in a sealskin cover, which folds over in a flap at the front.de Leeuw van Weenen, A. (1993) ''The Icelandic Homily Book : Perg. 15o in the Royal Library, Stockholm'' Reykjavík: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar á Íslandi, p. 25 Both the front cover and the flap have a number of signs carved into them, most of which can be identified as

runes Runes are the letter (alphabet), letters in a set of related alphabets known as runic alphabets native to the Germanic peoples. Runes were used to write various Germanic languages (with some exceptions) before they adopted the Latin alphabet, a ...

.de Leeuw van Weenen, A. (1993) ''The Icelandic Homily Book : Perg. 15o in the Royal Library, Stockholm'' Reykjavík: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar á Íslandi, p. 26 The back cover has three signs which appear to be in Gothic script. The text is predominantly in

Carolingian minuscule Carolingian minuscule or Caroline minuscule is a script which developed as a calligraphic standard in the medieval European period so that the Latin alphabet of Jerome's Vulgate Bible could be easily recognized by the literate class from one reg ...

script with insular

thorn Thorn(s) or The Thorn(s) may refer to: Botany * Thorns, spines, and prickles, sharp structures on plants * ''Crataegus monogyna'', or common hawthorn, a plant species Comics and literature * Rose and Thorn, the two personalities of two DC Com ...

and

wynn Wynn or wyn (; also spelled wen, ƿynn, and ƿen) is a letter of the Old English alphabet, where it is used to represent the sound . History The letter "W" While the earliest Old English texts represent this phoneme with the digraph , ...

,de Leeuw van Weenen, A. (1993) ''The Icelandic Homily Book : Perg. 15o in the Royal Library, Stockholm'' Reykjavík: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar á Íslandi, p. 35 written in brown ink.de Leeuw van Weenen, A. (1993) ''The Icelandic Homily Book : Perg. 15o in the Royal Library, Stockholm'' Reykjavík: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar á Íslandi, p. 27 There are a number of headings in red ink and occasionally the first word of a sermon has been filled in with red ink.de Leeuw van Weenen, A. (1993) ''The Icelandic Homily Book : Perg. 15o in the Royal Library, Stockholm'' Reykjavík: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar á Íslandi, p. 32 There are numerous marginal entries; some contemporary with the manuscript and others dating from the 16th – 19th centuries. There are a number of very early alterations to the manuscript which appear to date from a controversy between Theodor Wisén, the text's first editor, and Ludvig Larsson, who published a study which contained nearly 2000 corrections of Wisén’s edition.de Leeuw van Weenen, A. (1993) ''The Icelandic Homily Book : Perg. 15o in the Royal Library, Stockholm'' Reykjavík: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar á Íslandi, p. 5 Linbald (1975) concluded that in almost 1200 instances Larsson’s readings were correct and in around 150 cases, his readings were incorrect.de Leeuw van Weenen, A. (1993) ''The Icelandic Homily Book : Perg. 15o in the Royal Library, Stockholm'' Reykjavík: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar á Íslandi, p. 6 But in the majority of the instances where Larsson’s readings seem to be incorrect, there have been alterations to the text: identified as very young by the “shape of additions, ink and the quality of pen used”. Page 77v has three drawings: two lions engraved by dry-point and an ink drawing of a man pointing with his hand. The clearest lion is of Romanesque-type and has been dated to the first part of the 13th century. There has been much debate concerning the number of hands involved in the writing of the manuscript, with opinions ranging from 1 to 14.de Leeuw van Weenen, A. (1993) ''The Icelandic Homily Book : Perg. 15o in the Royal Library, Stockholm'' Reykjavík: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar á Íslandi, p. 32-3 The two most recent studies quoted by van Leuwen, (Rode 1974) and (Westlund 1974) place the number of hands at 14 and 12 respectively.de Leeuw van Weenen, A. (1993) ''The Icelandic Homily Book : Perg. 15o in the Royal Library, Stockholm'' Reykjavík: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar á Íslandi, p. 33 Van Leuwen states that she is drawn to there being only one hand involved.de Leeuw van Weenen, A. (1993) ''The Icelandic Homily Book : Perg. 15o in the Royal Library, Stockholm'' Reykjavík: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar á Íslandi, p. 34 Stefán Karlsson similarly holds this view.

The OIHB is principally distinct from the

(ONHB) in that unlike the latter it is not arranged according to the church year. The source material for the OIHB has been traced to a number of the

Church Fathers The Church Fathers, Early Church Fathers, Christian Fathers, or Fathers of the Church were ancient and influential Christian theologians and writers who established the intellectual and doctrinal foundations of Christianity. The historical per ...

, though a full study of the sources has yet to be carried out. However, the OIHB also made use of material available in other homiliaries. For example, it contains a close translation a sermon included in the “Pembroke-type homilary”: a

Carolingian The Carolingian dynasty (; known variously as the Carlovingians, Carolingus, Carolings, Karolinger or Karlings) was a Frankish noble family named after Charlemagne, grandson of mayor Charles Martel and a descendant of the Arnulfing and Pippin ...

preacher’s anthology. The style of the OIHB is closer to that of the

Íslendingasögur The sagas of Icelanders ( is, Íslendingasögur, ), also known as family sagas, are one genre of Icelandic sagas. They are prose narratives mostly based on historical events that mostly took place in Iceland in the ninth, tenth, and early e ...

than the Latinate vocabulary and syntax of later Old West Norse religious prose. It makes use of abrupt changes in tense and from indirect to direct speech, particularly in paraphrases of the gospels. It occasionally uses “native proverbs and everyday similitudes” which contribute to its simple, practical style. However, rhetorical devices are sometimes used to achieve a high style and some sentences can be scanned as verse. Of the 11 sermons in the OIHB and ONHB have in common, two are found in what is possibly the oldest Icelandic manuscript fragment, AM 237a fol: dated to 1150. These texts are the ‘ Stave-church Homily’ and a sermon for St. Michael’s Day. Indrebø has shown that the 11 sermons in common are copies of copies, at least. Similarly, he concluded that AM 237a fol is a copy of a copy, and was itself probably a remnant of a

itself.de Leeuw van Weenen, A. (1993) ''The Icelandic Homily Book : Perg. 15o in the Royal Library, Stockholm'' Reykjavík: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar á Íslandi, p. 19 This implies that at least some material in the manuscript belongs to before 1150. As well as sermons found in the ONHB and AM 237a fol, some sermons feature in other Old Norse manuscripts such as

Hauksbók Hauksbók (; 'Book of Haukr'), Reykjavík, Stofnun Árna Magnússonar AM 371 4to, AM 544 4to and AM 675 4to, is an Icelandic manuscript, now in three parts but originally one, dating from the 14th century. It was created by the Icelander Haukr E ...

.de Leeuw van Weenen, A. (1993) ''The Icelandic Homily Book : Perg. 15o in the Royal Library, Stockholm'' Reykjavík: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar á Íslandi, p. 8

References

External links

Uncritical edition in modern Icelandic orthography provided by Orðabók Háskolans
(in Icelandic)
Wisén's 1872 edition at septentrionalia.net
(in Icelandic)

David McDougall, review of ''The Icelandic Homily Book, Perg. 15 4° in the Royal Library, Stockholm,'' ed. Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen, and ''Íslensk hómilíubók: Fornar stólræður,'' ed. Sigurbjörn Einarsson, Guðrún Kvaran, and Gunnlaugur Ingólfsson, ''Alvíssmál'' 5 (1995): 107–11. Icelandic literature Icelandic manuscripts Old Norse literature

History

Description of the manuscript

Contents

See also

References

External links