A History Seen: The Uses of Illumination in Flateyjarbók

Thomas A. DuBois, University of Wisconsin-Madison

The parchment manuscript Flateyjarbók (GKS 1005 fol.) is one of the best known and most valuable medieval texts surviving from the Icelandic Middle Ages. Comprising 225 folio-sized leaves, or 450 pages, it contains important variants of many of Iceland's greatest sagas and pÖttir, particularly those connected with the pivotal kings "lafr Tryggvason (968–1000) and St. "lafr Haraldsson (995–1030). Its lavish marginal illustrations and decorated initials are also familiar to most students of ancient Icelandic literature, and grace the cover or frontispiece of many a saga translation. Yet the pictures of Flateyjarbók and the narratives or characters they help us envision are seldom examined together. The current study explores the relation between text and image in Flateyjarbók, providing an explanation for how depictions of Norway's kings are deployed in the text and what roles illustrations may have played for Flateyjarbók's earliest audience. I argue that Flateyjarbók's unique handling of its individual elements cannot be appreciated in its entirety unless we examine its texts in conjunction with their accompanying artwork. The illuminations of FlateyjarbókÊparticularly its decorated initialsÊhelp unite the sometimes disjointed narratives of the manuscript into a progress that begins with outlandish pagan exploits, reaches a climactic turning point in the era of Christianization, and ultimately evolves into the ordered and fully Christianized society of the fourteenth century. While major illuminations present this overriding theme, linking it visually to particular monarchs, secondary illuminations of a more schematic or stereotyped form accomplish other functions, including marking temporal shifts in the narrative, celebrating important subthemes (like the rise of Norway and details of Iceland's conversion), and spotlighting figures of particular interest to the creators or original audience of the book. Viewed in this perspective, Flateyjarbók becomes both a symbol and an embodiment of Icelandic culture during the fourteenth century.