"There are c. 2,000 relevant manuscripts, c. one tenth of which have a title page. Title pages in manuscript differ from title pages printed books: most importantly, they are not printed, but handwritten, and they often appear somewhere in the middle or towards the end of a manuscript, instead of just in the beginning. They often contain information that is only relevant for a specific part of the manuscript but not for the whole and hardly ever state the year and place of production.
The oldest title pages appear in legal, computistic, administrative, rhetorical and school manuscripts. They were written by the best-educated, wealthiest and most influential people of Iceland, and it becomes clear that this media change came ""top down"".
I selected two textual genres for an in-depth analysis: hymns and mythical-heroic sagas. The former appear in print as well and thus have printed counterparts for comparison. The latter were not printed in Iceland until the nineteenth century. The two sample groups provide therefore excellent examples of various media developments.
Almost one third of all hymn manuscripts contain one or more title pages. A large number of them are connected to one family: Hólmfriður Sigurðardóttir (1617-92) and her children, particularly her son Magnús Jónsson í Vigur (1637-1702). Suprisingly, though, most of the hymn manuscripts do not refer to the medium of print: only very few title pages state if or when they were copied from printed editions. Instead, they often refer to music, eg. with titles such as ""Mouth harp: a collection of spiritual songs "". Scribes or patrons are only seldomly mentioned. Decoration is rare and consists mostly of pen-flourished initials similar to decoration on printed title pages.
The second group, title pages of manuscripts containing myhtical-heroic sagas, brought very different results. Less than 10% contain a title page, they are younger than hymn manuscripts. Hoever, sseveral of them were ordered by one person: Magnús Jónsson í Vigur, already mentioned above. His title pages depict him in a very positive light. Decoration conists often of geometric, interlaced frames.
In general, we can see that title pages appear more often with textual genres that appeared in print as well, such as hymns and religious texts. The development of title pages shows similarities to the general development of manuscripts: computistic and legal texts were first written down and were among the first to incorporate title pages; there is an increase in both manuscript and title page production in the 1660s, 1680s and around 1700; and they both are often connected to the upper echelons of society. It seems that the patrons wanted to emphasise and reassure their high standing in society with their laudatory descriptions on title pages.
I presented my project and project results at several national and international conferences and organised a two-day international conference. I taught at the International Summer School in Icelandic Manuscript Studies and published one article in a conference volume and one in a handbook. I currently prepare a book on title pages and two more articles. My research was also introduced in articles for newspapers and the home page of my host institution, as well as in an interview for Ö1, Austria’s main radio station for culture that can boast with up to 650,000 listeners. Together with two colleagues, I held a workshop at the “Lange Nacht der Forschung” (open day at Austrian research institutions, over 180,000 visitors nationwide and c. 12,000 in our location in Vienna) in April 2016.
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