Scribal Culture in Nineteenth Century Iceland Matthew Driscoll’s
View of Magnus’ Vanishing World by Dr. Matthew Driscoll Margaret
and Richard Beck Lectures University of Victoria June 19, 2007
Article by Leif Nordholm Who would guess that common Icelandic
farmers were responsible for copying and preserving saga texts?
Actually, it turns out to be a rich tradition and Magnus Jonsson
(1835-1922) was among the most prolific of such farmer-scribes.
The Beck Trust was pleased to invite Dr. Matthew Driscoll,
curator of the Arnamagnæan manuscript collection in Copenhagen,
to the University of Victoria to lecture on this topic. Driscoll
finds the post-Gutenberg manuscript tradition fascinating: “Even
at the same time as people were printing texts, farmers in
Iceland—ordinary people—were actually hand-copying and trading
copies.” At the end of the tradition of farmer-scribes was
Magnús Jónsson. Magnús spent most of his life trying to preserve
sagas. His twenty volume collection, Fornmannasögur Norðurlanda
(Sagas of th