Posted on 12/30/2024 5:01:57 PM PST by SunkenCiv
Common in the Middle Ages, palimpsests are works written on calf hide vellum pages, where the earlier ink has been scraped off and replaced with new writing. While some underlying text can occasionally be made out with the naked eye, technologies such as infrared bring to light words that were lost centuries ago...
Iceland's connections to Scandinavia led to some of the most well-preserved information from the Viking Age, including an overview of Norway's royal lineage through the death of Magnus V Erlingsson in 1184. The islands's ancient poets, known as Skalds, were highly sought after across the Norse world. Norwegian kings employed storytellers to record their feats in Skaldic poems, one of the two major strands of Old Norse literature.
Skaldic poems began as oral traditions before the Icelanders transcribed them in Latin and Old Norse. Those sagas were first recorded in the 13th century, ending with the work of Snorri Sturluson...
Skalds wrote exclusively on vellum, a type of parchment made from calfskin. Just one book required dozens of skins, making production costly and time-consuming. Therefore, Icelanders often reused vellum if a book wore out or became obsolete, sometimes as entirely different items, such as the miter headgear worn by the bishop of Skálholt in Iceland. Commonly, Icelanders would scrape and polish the text off of the vellum so that it could be reused, creating a palimpsest...
Fundamentally, investigating Iceland's medieval palimpsests reveals a rich tapestry of literary ingenuity, religious transformation, and European intellectual exchange, showcasing how resourceful Icelanders preserved their cultural heritage through reused manuscripts and hidden texts.
(Excerpt) Read more at thedebrief.org ...
Björk
RE: Iceland? Manuscripts? Will anyone be able to read or pronounce them?
As Anita Briem, Icelandic actress who played the character Hannah Sigurbjörnsdóttir in Journey to the Center of the Earth (remake, 2008). Her mother is the singer Erna Þórarinsdóttir.
Partly filmed in Iceland in Stykkishólmur a town and municipality in the western part of Iceland, on the northern side of the Snæfellsnes peninsula.
Try reading all that aloud, quickly.
Wow, texting is old, who new?
I thought of Hillary when I read they scraped text off of vellum.
I read somewhere that one of the manuscripts said “Don’t forget to drink your ovaltine”.
(Someone HAD to say it).
Thank you.
Thanks for the link to the Immigrant Song in Old Norse. My daughter is a linguistics fan and will love this.
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