Iceland and Norway: separate scribal cultures or cultural
exchange?
In the middle of twelfth century Nidaros, or Trondheim as the city is called today,
became the centre of a new ecclesiastical province which at its greatest extend
included not only mainland Norway, but also part of what now is Sweden, Iceland,
Greenland, the Faeroe Isles, the Orkneys, Shetland, the Western Isles of Scotland and
the Isle of Man.1 The liturgy for this new province, i.e. the selection and order of the
texts to be read and sung during the church services, had found its form by the
beginning of the thirteenth century. It was collected in a so-called ordinal, a book
which contains the first few words of each item along with instructions when and
where they were to be performed. Fortunately the ordinal of Nidaros has survived
in four Icelandic manuscripts from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.2 They
tell us which chants, prayers, and readings were part of the liturgy in the cathedrals
and parish churches of the archbishopric. When it comes to the books containing
the whole texts or melodies the situation is different: for many of the regions once
belonging to the province of Nidaros no liturgical manuscripts seem to have
survived at all. Only sources from Norway and Iceland are known, and most of them
are in a very fragmentary state: they consist of single leaves or parts of leaves only.
Despite their poor condition they witness to an active scribal culture in these two
countries and constitute a valuable source of information for the history of books
and writing in Western parts of Scandinavia.
Ca 350 liturgical fragments are kept in Icelandic archives.3 In Norway the main
collection of medieval fragments is found in the National Archives in Oslo. Here
some 6000 fragments have been registered, most of them from liturgical books. The
investigation of these fragments has shown that the earliest fragments (datable to
between ca 1000 and 1225) constitute five to six hundred books. About half of them
are possibly of Norwegian origin.4 The study of these fragments has enabled
Michael Gullick and Åslaug Ommundsen to identify two scribes active before and
around 1200, one of whom worked together with other scribes.5 He has been
Before the erection of the archbishopric of Nidaros, all of Scandinavia was part of
the archbishopric of Lund (1103-1152/3), and before that of Hamburg-Bremen (ca
1043-1103).
2 A diplomatic edition of the manuscripts (including a few fragments as well) was
published by Lilli Gjerløw (Gjerløw 1968).
3 This includes the fragment holdings of the Arnamagnæan Collection at the
University of Copenhagen.
4 Gullick and Ommundsen 2012, 26.
5 See Gullick and Ommundsen 2012. My presentation of the two scribes is based on
this article.
1
1
named the Homily Book scribe, after an homiliary in Old Norwegian.6 He not only
wrote in the vernacular but also in Latin as fragments from two liturgical books
penned by him show. In addition he rubricated his manuscripts, wrote the music
notation and supplied the initials. The initials, rubrics and music notation in turn
made it possible to identify him in a few additional fragments where the text was
written by three other scribes. The Homily Book scribe has been associated with an
ecclestical institution in Bergen, and the collaboration between him and other
scribes thus makes him part of the first identified scriptorium in Norway.
The other scribe is the so-called Benedict scribe. He was named after a fragment of
the translation of the Rule of St. Benedict into Old Norwegian. Like the Homily Book
scribe he wrote both in the vernacular and in Latin, but if the assumption that he
was responsible for both text and music in his manuscripts is correct, he seems to
have worked on his own. He has be identified as the scribe of six Latin liturgical
books and is assumed to have been based in Trondheim. Surprisingly, a fragment
from one of the manuscripts written by him has been found in the Arnamagnæan
fragment collection in Copenhagen, a collection strongly associated with Iceland.
The leaf seems to have been used as binding for one of the books of the scholar and
collector of Icelandic manuscripts Árni Magnússon.7
How a fragment written by a Norwegian scribe ended up in an Icelandic collection in
Copenhagen remains a mystery so far. It can, of course, have made its way to
Denmark directly from Norway. On the other hand, Árni Magnússon might have
acquired it in Iceland where he collected manuscripts of interest for Icelandic
history and culture. Parchment from liturgical manuscripts were mainly used for
binding his books. If the fragment came from Iceland, the next question would be
whether it was written in Norway or in Iceland, i.e. whether the manuscript moved
or the scribe who wrote it. This question has to be left open as well. Little is known
so far concerning the interaction of scribal cultures in Norway and in Iceland in the
Middle Ages. The present study of three sources from the thirteenth century or
around 1300 tries to address this issue from a musicological perspective, focussing
on music notation.
A choir antiphoner from Nidaros
In the holdings of the Royal Library in Copenhagen we can find ten leaves from a
medieval liturgical book (KB Add. 47 fol.), used as bindings for Danish accounts in
the seventeenth century. They constitute a minor part of what once must have been
an antiphoner, a book containing the texts and melodies of the office, the daily
round of church services based on the singing of the psalms. Because of its large
size (ca 45,5 x 30 cm) the manuscript could be read from by more than one person
at the same time and was probably used by a choir. The selection and order of the
For a publication on the Old Norwegian Homily Book (Gammelnorsk homiliebok)
and the scribe who wrote it see Haugen and Ommundsen 2010.
7 On Árni Magnússon see Driscoll and Óskarsdóttir 2015 (in press).
6
2
chants follows the liturgy of the archbishopric of Nidaros, apart from an office for
the Holy Blood inserted between the Nativity of Mary (September 8) and the
Exaltation of the Holy Cross (September 14). This feast is not included in the ordinal
for Nidaros. Nidaros Cathedral, however, is known to have been in the possession of
a relic of the Holy Blood in the Middle Ages which was celebrated on September 12,
so the manuscript most likely was written to be used in the cathedral in Nidaros.8
The fragment has been dated to the third quarter of the thirteenth century. At that
time the cathedral still was a building site, the nave being the last big project to be
finished. This part of the church was probably roofed around 1270-80, making it
usable for liturgical services,9 and it has been suggested that the antiphoner could
have been made to be used in the new space of the cathedral.10
The Norwegian provenance of the manuscript has never been doubted. Its
association with the cathedral of the archbishop's seat of Nidaros makes it natural to
assume that it was written there as well. So far we do not have any knowledge of a
scriptorium in the second half of the thirteenth century at Nidaros. But there
certainly must have been competent scribes among the clergy who could provide
the cathedral with the necessary books, and there should have been little need to
order books from somewhere else.
Place of use vs. place of production
When working with liturgical manuscripts one of the great challenges is to identify
their primary provenance, i.e. where they actually were produced. As a rule scribes
did not sign what they had written, so when studying we usually know neither the
names of the scribe nor where and when he worked. Paleography and codicology
can tell us much about when a book might have been compiled, and a comparison of
scribal habits can also indicate which area it came from. The content, too, can
contribute to assigning it to a certain place: If the selection and order of texts agree
with a known liturgical use it is likely to have belonged to a church that followed
this use. However, there is also the possibility of books being moved from one place
to the other. They might have been ordered, or they might have been sent off or
acquired for other reasons. We therefore have to distinguish between the place a
manuscript was written and where it was used.
Concerning KB Add. 47 fol. we can state that it was written for a church that (1)
followed the use of Nidaros, (2) celebrated a feast of the Holy Blood between
Lilli Gjerløw was the first to draw attention to manuscript and provided pictures of
all the leaves and a textual edition of the office (Gjerløw 1979, 230-242 and plates
34-54). A more thorough study of its texts and melodies was published in 2004
(Attinger 2004). For images and a list of publications on Add. 47 fol see the
webpage of the Royal Library in Copenhagen:
http://www.kb.dk/permalink/2006/manus/69/.
9 Ekroll 2004.
10 Attinger 2004, 14-15.
8
3
September 8 and 14, and (3) probably had a choir. Nidaros cathedral as the place of
use is an obvious candidate. But what about the place where the manuscript was
written?
Like many of the liturgical books in the Nordic countries Add. 47 fol. has been
preserved in the form of single leaves only. Such fragments not only provide less
paleographical information than a complete manuscript, but also transmit a much
more limited amount of content which often makes it difficult, or impossible, to
decide which liturgical use is might have belonged to. And even if it is possible to
find elements that are specific for a particular tradition, as is the case with Add. 47
fol., a problem arises when two distinct areas had their liturgy more or less in
common as it is the case for Norway and Iceland. Each being part of the medieval
archsee of Nidaros, the churches in both areas followed – or were supposed to
follow – the same liturgy. This poses a major challenge when trying to sort out
whether a manuscript was written in Norway or in Iceland since it could have been
written in one place and still be used without much adjustment in a church in the
other.
When it comes to books written in the vernacular, as for instance law books and
sagas, language has usually been used to distinguish between Norwegian and
Icelandic manuscripts. Even though Old Norse was common for both Iceland and
Norway, there are linguistic features distinctive for either of the them. Even within
Norway manuscripts can be assigned to certain areas on the basis of the use and
spelling of words.
Liturgical books have received much less attention so far. And since they are
written in Latin, the situation is different from the manuscripts written in Old Norse.
Apart from sporadic marginal additions in the vernacular little help can be gained
from studying the language. It has been suggested that the spelling of certain words
might point towards either Iceland or Norway: vallde instead of valde has been said
to be an an Icelandic writing habit11 and so have communia, prefatia, and offerenda
instead of communio, prefatio, and offertorium respectively.12 Vallde, however, also
appears in a missal fragment written by the so-called St. Olav scribe, so it might not
be an Icelandic trait after all. 13
Gjerløw 1980, vol. 1, 63.
Gjerløw 1980, vol. 1, 30.
13 NRA Lat. fragm. 72. For more information on this scribe see Gjerløw 1968 (3538) and Ommundsen 2007 (vol. 1, 213-218). A fragment containing parts of two
masses for the Dead written by the St. Olav scribe is kept in the National Library in
Reykjavik (Lbs "Skinnbrot Nr. 22"). From the secondary provenance added in the
margin ("Senjen 1629") and the content it is clear that the fragment must have come
from the National Archives in Oslo and belongs to a codex which Gjerløw called
"Man 1". A note accompanying the fragment states that it probably was a gift from
the Norwegian philologist Carl Richard Unger (1817-1897).
11
12
4
There are other clues than particularities of language that may indicate whether a
liturgical manuscript has Icelandic origin rather than Norwegian. One of them is the
colour and quality of the ink and parchment. In a recent study it has been argued
that there are paleographical features as well that can point to Iceland as the place
where a manuscript was written.14 One of them which appears in numerous
manuscripts of known Icelandic origin and is easy to observe is the use of small
capital H in words other than the so-called nomina sacra (i.e. abbreviations of Jesus
Christus or names of saints).
Ill.1. Examples of "Icelandic" use of small capital H (Hominibus, tHronum).
The growing awareness of the existence of distinctions on the level of paleography
even in Latin texts helps us to assign manuscripts to certain scribal traditions. It
does, however, not give us a final tool to answer the question whether a manuscript
can be called Icelandic or Norwegian. There has always been strong cultural
exchange between Norway and Iceland, and the study of vernacular manuscripts
has shown that there seems to have been an extensive export of books from Iceland
to Norway in the Middle Ages, i.e. books written in Iceland are known to have been
brought to Norway.15 The opposite – a Norwegian book ending up in Iceland – could
take place as well.16 In addition we have to deal with the possibility of more than
these two scenarios: not only can a book have been written by an Icelandic scribe in
Iceland or by a Norwegian scribe in Norway and been moved from one country to
the other, but an Icelandic scribe might have worked in Norway, or a scribe in
Norway might have copied an Icelandic book following the idiosyncrasies of the
original. And what about a Norwegian scribe being trained in Iceland and writing as
he was taught upon his return to Norway?
Music notation and melodic variance as source of information about
provenance
Chant melodies seldom get much attention from historians studying book culture,
even though liturgical books often not only contain the texts for the church services
they were intended to serve but provide music as well, as it is the case with Add. 47
fol. Both melodies and the way they were written down can give useful information
about the provenance of a manuscript. The analysis of chant melodies has
previously be used to support codicological and paleographical findings regarding
Ommundsen and Attinger 2013.
Karlsson 1979.
16 An example of this is the fragment of the St. Benedict scribe mentioned above (AM
Accessoria 7 HS 56).
14
15
5
the provenance of manuscripts. This is based on the observation that not only
textual but also melodic variants often follow liturgical uses or places. A study of
musical variance may thus give an indication where a manuscript was written.
A crucial methodological problem concerning a musical investigation of selected
Nidaros fragments with respect to provenance is that we do not know what a
“Norwegian” or an “Icelandic” version of a chant looked like. So far no study has
been undertaken to systematically compare melodies from manuscripts with known
Norwegian or Icelandic origin to establish an understanding for what kind of and
how much variance there existed between the two areas.17 But that does not mean
that musical information has to be ignored completely. There are other matters
with respect to chant melodies that can be looked into.
One intriguing feature of Add. 47 fol., for instance, is the frequent corrections,
mainly in the music notation. Notes have been erased, added, or their pitch has
been changed. Why should this have been done if the manuscript was a local
product, presumably following local traditions also when it comes to melody? There
seems to be no pattern in the notational changes besides a clear reduction in
number of repeated pitches and liquescent neumes. And there is no indication that
the melodies were changed in order to be consistent with a liturgical use other than
Nidaros. 18 But could there be another explanation for the melodic corrections than
a possible change in local tradition?
Repeated pitches and liquescent neumes are more related to the way a melody is
notated and performed than to melodic variation (differences in pitch). The
notation mainly used in Norwegian and Icelandic manuscripts is the so-called
square notation. It is the shape of the note-heads that has given the notation its
name: they have a square/rectangular form or can be shaped like a diamond. Two
notes representing a falling interval can also be represented as a diagonal line. This
notation was common all over Western Europe (and is still the standard notation for
plainchant today).
There is, however, a particular note sign the use of which seems to be restricted to
Icelandic manuscripts: it is a kind of ``double'' or ``twin'' note where two square
note heads are written so closely together that they in part overlap and appear as
one longer note head.19 The use of two stems can reveal that the scribe actually
wrote two note heads, but often close examination of the original document is
My investigations of office chants (Attinger 1999) had its focus on comparison of
Norwegian fragments with other European traditions; Iceland was touched upon
only briefly.
18 A detailed description of the changes can be found in Attinger 2004, 149-151.
19 In AM Accessoria 7 HS 26 up to 6 note heads have been combined, but this seems
to be an exception; the combination of two note heads are the rule. The provenance
of HS 26 has been suggested to be England (Geert Andersen 2008, 36-37), but it is
more likely to be Iceland.
17
6
necessary to decide whether a double note has been written or not. The double note
heads appear both in single notes and in compound neumes.
Ill. 2. Examples of ``double'' or ``twin'' notes.
To be sure, most Icelandic manuscripts with music notation do not have double
notes. Where they do appear the amount used by differet scribes varies greatly. In
some manuscripts they are very scarce, in others they can appear in almost every
other note. There seems to be no general rule or agreement where double notes
were supposed to be placed. A comparison of the melody of the introit for Epiphany
Ecce advenit dominator dominus written by two fifteenth-century Icelandic scribes
may serve as an example. The two scribes are known to have worked together since
their hands can both be found in the so-called Missale Scardense (AM Accessoria 7
HS 1).20 Scribe A is even known by name: Jón Þorláksson. He was the main scribe of
the missal and responsible for the rubrics. He is known from several other
manuscripts and wrote both in Latin and in the vernacular. His fellow scribe seems
to have not been as active. Besides the Missale Scardense where he cooperated with
Jón Þorláksson only one other manuscript written by him has survived (AM
Accessoria 7 HS 3). Since they were working together one would assume that they
had been trained within the same system and would use double notes in more or
less the same way. This does not seem to be the case.
Ill. 3a. AM Accessoria 7 HS 1: the introit Ecce advenit dominator dominus. Neumes
with double notes are marked (Foto: ).
Almost 60 leaves of this manuscript have survived and are now kept at the
Arnamagnæan Institute in Copenhagen.
20
7
Ill. 3b. AM Accessoria 7 HS 3: the introit Ecce advenit dominator dominus. Neumes
with double notes are marked (Foto: ).
As illustrations 3a and b show both scribes use double notes in six places in this
chant. They do not, however, always agree where they appear. Whereas scribe A
has four double notes in the main part of the chant and two in the verse, scribe B
uses three in the main part and three in the verse. Of the double notes of the main
part, only two appear in the same place in both manuscripts, on dominus21 and eius
respectivly. In HS 1 double notes can also be found on Ecce and imperium, whereas
HS 3 has a double note on potestas not found in HS 1.
Inconsistencies can also be found in manuscripts written by the same scribe.
Unfortunately there is little material that allows a comparison of melodies between
AM Accessoria 7 HS 1 (written by scribe A and B) and HS 222 (scribe A) or HS 3
(scribe B). Double notes are not uses in all chants, and in addition the preserved
pages are often mutilated and worn which makes it difficult to compare the music
notation from the illustrations provided in the catalogue of the collection. The
conclusion from what I have been able to see so far is that even where the two
manuscripts have identical melodies, double notes not always appear the same
places. Ill. 5a and b might serve as an example. Here the two versions of the
offertory Ave maria gratia plena from HS 1 and HS 2 respectively are shown. Both
are witten by scribe A (Jón Þorláksson). From tecum to the end the melodies are
identical. On tecum, however, the double note of HS 1 is missing in HS 2, and on the
last note of mulieribus H2 has a double note where HS 1 has none.23
Bold font indicates the syllable at which the double note occurs.
AM Accessoria 7 HS 2 is the so-called Graduale Gufudalense. 34 leaves of this
manuscript have survived and are now kept at the Arnamagnæan Institute in
Copenhagen.
23 There might be another double note in HS 2 on the last note of ventris; this is not
possible to verify from the reproduction.
21
22
8
Ill. 5a. The offertory Ave maria gratia plena from AM Accessoria 7 HS 1 (Foto: ).
Ill. 5b. The offertory Ave maria gratia plena from AM Accessoria 7 HS 2 (Foto: ).
There is more melodic variance at dominus, and here HS 1 has four double notes and
repeats a pitch in two places, whereas HS 2 only has two double notes:
HS 1
HS 2
Ill. 6. Melisma at dominus in the offertory Ave maria gratia plena in AM Accessoria 7
HS 1 and HS 2. Double notes are marked. A transcription is given in Ill. 8.
If even one and the same scribe does not use double notes consistently, it is
reasonable to wonder whether a double note implies any melodic importance at all
or is just a writing habit on par with small capital H which does not seem to have
9
any semantic significance either. To my knowledge there are no manuscripts
written by the same scribe, or cooperating scribes, where the same content has
survived which would make it possible to compare the consistency in the use of
small capital H. A preliminary conclusion concerning the use of small capital H and
double notes so far is that neither of them seems to be clearly connected to the
pronunciation or performance of a word or musical phrase but have rather to be
seen as part of an Icelandic scribal tradition.
Add. 47 fol. does not contain any double notes. Neither does the paleography of the
written text of Add. 47 fol. contain any of the features characteristic for Icelandic
manuscripts only, like the use of small capital H. We find the 'x' wich looks like a
slanted letter 'r' with a stroke added under the baseline, which is common for both
Iceland and Norway, and in one place the au-ligature is used, again a letter that
appears in both Icelandic and Norwegian manuscripts. Only the use of an open 'e'
gives the hand a somewhat Icelandic look.
When comparing the melodies with other manuscripts, however, I noticed that one
of the Icelandic fragments consulted24 (1) did not differ much melodically from Add.
47 fol., and (2) often had double notes in the places where Add. 47 fol. had a
repetition of pitch.25 The two manuscripts have only four chants in common, so any
conclusions based on these observations should be treated with caution, but still it
is tempting to pose the question whether they are purely coincidental or could be
the result of two scribes having the same background, i.e. being Icelandic or having
been trained in Iceland. This would then offer another possible explanation for the
changes made in the manuscript: the melodies weren't in accordance with the
musical tradition of the archbishop's seat due to the scribe's Icelandic background
and were revised at a later time for that reason.26
A Nidaros ordinal for Nidaros Cathedral?
The hand of Add. 47 fol. is rather similar to, though not identical with, the hand of
the main scribe of one of the manuscripts of the Nidaros ordinal, AM 679 4to, which
was edited by Gjerløw in 1968. She dates this copy of the ordinal to the last quarter
of the thirteenth century, i.e. it was written close in time to Add. 47 fol.27 It has
never been doubted that this manuscript was written in Iceland even though
nothing is known about its origin or early history. A note from its collector, Árni
Magnússon, who according to himself aquired the book in 1704, states that ``[t]he
book had come to him from North Iceland, and was said to have followed its old
AM Accessoria 7 HS 33. It consists of five leaves from an antiphoner containing
part of the Common of the Saints and the Sanctorale.
25 Attinger 1999, 317.
26 On the other hand, in the case of the chants that Add. 47 fol. has in common with
AM Accessoria 7 HS 33, the melodies conform even more with the changed versions
of Add. 47 fol.
27 Gjerløw 1968, 58.
24
10
church in the Vödlaþing (Eyj.)".28 Several additions to the main text (from ca. 1400
and later), however, seem to connected the manuscript to the diocese of Skálholt.29
Ill. 9. One page of AM 679 4to, fol. 58v. The choir directory begins on line 13 from
below with the words Ordo nidrosiensis ecclesie. (Foto:)
28
29
Gjerløw 1968, 55.
Gjerløw 1968, 58.
11
The manuscript was written by three (or perhaps four, see footnote 31) scribes.
Their handwriting has been described by Gjerløw in her edition of the ordinal,
where she also provides plates of three pages exemplifying the different hands
which she calls scribes Aa, Ab, and Ac. She characterizes Aa as ``the most
distinguished [scribe] with a rhythmical beauty of his own" and ``belong[ing] in a
great tradition of Icelandic manuscript production, embodied in some of the best
vernacular manuscripts of the thirteenth century".30 The scribe uses the small
capital H typical for Icelandic scribal tradition.
AM 679 4to is of special interest in context with Add 47 fol. becaus of the content of
the last two pages (see Ill. 9). They give a so-called choir directory, i.e. a list of
instructions for the grading and celebration of feasts for the use of Nidaros (it tells
for instance how many candles were to be lighted and how many singers were
involved) which includes the feast for the celebration of the Holy Blood, a local feast
probably only celebrated at within the town of Nidaros.31 AM 679 4to is thus one of
the few manuscripts that mention this feast. Unfortunately the pages that might
have contained the liturgy itself have not been preserved (there is a lacunae
between the feast of John and Paul (June 26) and the feast of All Saints (November
1)). As Gjerløw also pointed out, AM 679 4to is the only of the preserved ordinal
manuscripts that has the rubric Jn dedicatione ecclesie sancte trinitatis on the
Dedication Day of Nidaros Cathedral which was consecrated to the Holy Trinity.32
The others do include the feast but do not specify the dedication.
The scribe could well have included these rubrics because they were part of the
original manuscript he made a copy of. The question is whether he actually could
have be making a copy intended for use at Nidaros Cathedral? Saga books are
known to have been produced in Iceland for export to Norway, and there is no
reason to believe that they could not have been the case for liturgical books as well.
On the other hand, the scribe might have been working in Nidaros, copying books
for the cathedral and then taking or sending the copy back to Iceland where it ended
up at Skálholt and finally in the diocese of Hólar. In that case, all three scribes of AM
679 4to must have worked in Norway. As Gjerløw points out ``only a scriptorium of
high standing could at one time have been served by scribes as Aa, Ab and Ac".
Nidaros Cathedral would certainly have been an obvious place to house such a
scriptorium. If the ordinal was written in Iceland, on the other hand, perhaps
Skálholt might be the place of origin. In any case, if the copy of the ordinal was
made for use in Nidaros, either scenario would testify for a connection between
Norway and Iceland.
Gjerløw 1968, 58.
This section was added by a scribe that Gjerløw suggested to be identical with the
main scribe (scribe Aa) which I think to be right.
32 Between 28 April and May 1, see Gjerløw 1968, 73.
30
31
12
A Norwegian sequence fragment with double notes
Four liturgical manuscripts kept in Norwegian Archives have double notes.33 Except
for these occurences this particular note sign has only be found in manuscripts with
documented or assumed Icelandic provenance. Three of the Norwegian fragments
have survived as bindings for seventeenth-century documents in the Western part
of Norway. The last one, NRA Lat. fragm. 281, was used for binding tax accounts in
Akershus len and was therefore likely to have belonged to a church in the Southeast
of Norway, i.e. none of them are connected to the town of Nidaros.
Both the dark ink and the use of double notes link Lat. fragm. 281 to Icelandic
scribal tradition. Being dated to the first half of the thirteenth century it is one of
the earliest manuscripts with double notes. The fragment consists of two pieces
which together make up almost one leaf from a gradual, i.e. a book containing chants
for the mass. The upper and inner margins of the leaf have been trimmed, and two
lines of music are partly cut off. The manuscript contains part of the liturgy for the
Assumption of Mary (August 15), beginning in versicle 2b of the sequence Aurea
virga prime. The fragment ends incompletely in the communion Alma dei genitrix. 34
A sequence is a chant genre that has been of special interest to scholars for many
years and has been studied quite extensively. Being a newcomer to the established
liturgy of the Roman Church in the 10th century, sequences soon became popular,
and new ones were written also for feasts and saints which were celebrated only
within limited areas. They are thus valued objects for the study of local traditions,
and the appearance of certain sequences in a manuscript is often used to help
identify the region where it probably was made or used. In addition melodic
variants have been used to identify provenance. Aurea virga prima was the most
commonly used sequence for the celebration of the Assumption of Mary, and its
presence in a manuscript can thus not be used to narrow down the area of origin for
a manuscript in which it occurs.35 And as pointed out above above there is little
information to be gained from an analysis of musical variance since we do not know
whether there is significant variation between the musical tradition in Iceland and
Norway. I will therefore only have a look at the music notation and focus on the use
of double notes.
See Ommundsen and Attinger 2013, 314-315 for a short description.
For a description of the manuscript see Ommundsen 2007, 114-117.
35 The fragment can be ascribed to the use of Nidaros because of the occurence of
the communion Alma dei genitrix (cf. Gjerløw 1968, 383n).
33
34
13
Ill. 7. Verso side of NRA Lat. fragm. 281 containing the end of the sequence Aurea
virgo prime, the offertory Ave maria gratia plena, incipits for the Gloria and Agnus
dei and the beginning of the communio Alma dei genitrix. (Foto: Gisela Attinger).
14
In addition to Lat. fragm. 281 the melody has been partly preserved in five
manuscripts in Norwegian and Icelandic collections.36 The sequence was prescribed
already in the Nidaros ordinal which was compiled within half a century after the
establishment of the archbishopric of Nidaros, and we also find it in the printed
Nidaros missal from 1519 (without music), i.e. it was in use in Norwegian and
Icelandic churches throughout a period of at least 300 years.
Two observations can be made with regard to the use of double notes in Lat. fragm.
281. One of them concerns the sequence Aurea virga prime. Here double notes can
be found in seven places: at pneuma (5b), sancta (6a), nostri (6b), namque (8a),
gloria (8b), regnas (9a), and benigna (also 9a).37 Most of these syllables are places
where one might expect a liquescent neume. A comparison with two of the Icelandic
sources containing the sequence shows the following: the scribe of AM Accessoria 7
HS 2, Jón Þorláksson, does not use liquescence at all, and double notes are used only
in compound neumes, i.e. a comparison with Lat. fragm. 281 is not possible. Þjms
141,38 a fragment from a thirteenth-century sequentionary who unfortunately
breaks off incompletely in 6b, does use liquescence in the sequence. The frament
has a plica at sancta and nostri but not at pneuma, i.e. in two out of three places there
is a correspondence between the use of double notes and liquescence. On the other
hand, Lat. fragm. 281 has a liquescent neume in one of the other chants preserved in
the fragment. As can be seen in Ill. 7 line 2 from below, there is a liquescent neume
at the first syllable of Agnus. It seems unlikely therefore that double notes are used
equivalently to liquescent neumes since the scribe obviously was acquainted with
liquescence and could have used them it in the sequence as well. But on the other
hand it cannot be ruled out that double notes, like liquescence, are supposed to be
delivered in a special way during a performance of the chant and were used for that
reason.
The sequence Aurea virga prime is followed by the offertory Ave maria gratia plena
of which two versions have been presented above (se Ill. 6). A comparison of the
melody in Lat. fragm. 281 with the melodies in AM Accessoria 7 HS 1 and HS 2
shows that there is little agreement between the three manuscripts as to where the
double notes are placed. There is variation in the melodies as well, but most of this
is due to the different use of passing notes, i.e. the contour of the melodies is more
or less the same. The only place where the three manuscipts differ more
substantially is on dominus:
Cf. Eggen 1968, vol. 1, 236-239. One of the manuscripts is of English origin. One
of the Icelandic fragments contains only the first few words of the chant.
37 The numbers in parenteses refer to the versicles of the chant.
38 The manuscript is now kept at the Árni Magnússon Institute in Reykjavik (formely
at the National Museum).
36
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Ill. 8. Transcription of the melody at dominus from the offertory Ave maria gratia
plena. Double notes are marked with the letter d.
As discussed above HS 1 and HS 2 differ melodically from each other in the melisma
on the first syllable of dominus. Lat. fragm. 281 shares the opening of the melisma
(A-c) with AM Accessoria 7 HS 2 (HS 1 opens with G-c) but continues differently
from HS 1 and HS 2 and goes down to D before concluding the phrase with AG-FG.
Both HS 1 and HS 2 have G as their lowest note in the melisma and end with the
undertone cadence FG-G. Double notes are used in four places which do not
coincide with either HS 1 or HS 2 though they are in line with the tendency that it is
the highest note in a neume that is written as a double note.
Lat. fragm. 281 was written some 250 years before the two Icelandic mass books HS
1 and HS 2. All three of them can have been made in Iceland, and Lat. fragm. 281 can
have been exported to Norway after it was written, or brought to Norway at a later
time. Melodies can change over time and the differences can be explained by the
time lapse. But we should also keep open the possibility of an Icelandic scribe, or a
scribe trained in Iceland, working in Norway.
Summary
The three manuscripts discussed above differ in size, genre and provenance: an
antiphoner consisting of ten leaves, most likely written for the cathedral in
Trondheim, a copy of an ordinal representing the use of Nidaros, and two fragments
making up one leaf from a gradual of unknown provenance but probably once
belonging to a church in the Eastern part of Norway. On the other hand, they have
several things in common: they were written in the thirteenth century or around
1300, i.e. at a time when the archsee of Nidaros was well established, they all
represent the liturgy of Nidaros, and they can in some way or other be related to
Iceland.
The placement of the ordinal (AM 679 4to) seems to be straight forward: it was
acquired in Iceland in the seventeenth century, can be associated with the church of
Skálholt in the later Middle Ages, and was written by three scribes one of which
certainly was Icelandic or trained in Iceland. The book contains two rubrics that
connect it more closely to Nidaros Cathedral than other exemplars of the ordinal
that have survived: the feast of the Holy Blood, and the dedication to the Holy
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Trinity. Even though this doesn't necessarily mean that it was written for use in the
cathedral, the possibility should be taken into consideration when trying to
investigate the existance of a scribal centre in connection with the cathedral. If the
manuscript was not written in Nidaros the question arises where in Iceland there
existed a scriptorium that consisted of at least three competent scribes producing
liturgical books. Perhaps we should be looking for their hands in other manuscripts
as well, not only in liturgical books but in books written in the vernacular as well.
The antiphoner (KB Add. 47 fol.) was most likely written for Nidaros Cathedral since
it follows the use of Nidaros and in addition contains an office for the Holy Blood, a
relic that the cathedral at the archbishop's seat was known to have owned. The text
hand very much resembles the hand of the ordinal, and a few of the chants are
melodically close to an antiphoner of Icelandic origin. The musical relationship,
however, is not a very firm argument and needs to be looked into more closely. The
fragment contains several two-colored initials and a figurative initial of St. Olav.
Perhaps a study of the style of the initials can contribute to saying something about
the scribe who wrote them?
The third manuscript (NRA Lat, fragm 281) contains double notes, a note sign which
is mainly found in fragments with Icelandic provenance. This strongly suggests that
the fragment either was imported from Iceland, or was written by an Icelandic
scribe in Norway. Concerning the musical meaning of double notes the findings so
far are rather ambiguous: They are not used consistantly in the same places in the
same chants, not even if the manuscripts were written by the same scribe. In some
instances there seems to be a possible correlation between double notes and the use
of repeated pitches or liquescence, but altogether no clear picture emerges so far. A
more thorough musical investigation of double notes is needed to find out where
and why they were used. This in turn will perhaps contribute to our understanding
of musical variance between Icelandic and Norwegian sources and help assigning
liturgical fragments with chant melodies to one area or the other.
The three manuscripts are typical examples of the type of sources we are confronted
with when studying liturgical books from the use of Nidaros. The ordinal and the
antiphoner might at some point have been used (or even written) in the same place,
but the gradual certainly had no connection to the town of Nidaros, neither as the
place where it was written or where it was used. The manuscripts vary with respect
to formality of the script and quality of parchment and ink, and they have very
different histories after they went out of use after the Reformation in the beginning
of the seventeenth century. This diversity makes it necessary to see each fragment
as an individual with its own story and personality. The investigation of single
fragments will slowly but surely contibute to drawing a better map of where and
when scribal activity took place in medieval Norway. What seems to be clear in any
case, is that we have to take the possibility of Icelandic manuscipts exported to
Norway and Icelandic scribes working in Norway into consideration when studying
liturgical sources from thirteenth century Nidaros.
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