Law Manuscripts from Fifteenth-Century Iceland

This article discusses a number of interdisciplinary aspects of Icelandic law manuscripts, produced in the fifteenth century, which contain important vernacular legal codes dealing with secular and ecclesiastical matters in medieval Iceland, such as Jónsbók and Kristinréttr Árna Þorlákssonar. In this article, it is argued that a continuity of law manuscript production exists in Iceland following the Black Death in 1402–04; this is seen in several ways: indications are found in textual and artistic parts of the manuscripts, as well as in para-texts that accompany the law texts in the margins. With particular focus on the manuscript AM 136 4to (Skinnastaðabók), this article discusses four distinctive cross-disciplinary features of fifteenth-century Icelandic law manuscripts: the adaptation and further development of textual contents initially found in law manuscripts dating back to previous centuries, select types of layouts chosen by the initial scribes, the book painting, and the use of the margins by later users and owners for comments and discussion on the textual content. The article concludes that with the changing Scandinavian politics in the late fourteenth century, Icelandic law manuscripts in the fifteenth century were first and foremost written for, and inspired by, domestic productions. While texts related to Norwegian royal supremacy and trade are rarely featured, the texts most used for domestic issues appear more frequently. On the other hand, statutes and concordats occur as regularly in these manuscripts as they do in earlier works, which indicates ongoing contact with the Norwegian Archdiocese of Niðaróss during the fifteenth century.publishedVersio

Illuminated Manuscript Production in Medieval Iceland: Literary and Artistic Activities of the Monastery at Helgafell in the Fourteenth Century

This book examines a cultural revolution that took place in the Scandinavian artistic landscape during the medieval period. Within just one generation (c. 1340–1400), the Augustinian monastery of Helgafell became the most important centre of illuminated manuscript production in western Iceland. By conducting interdisciplinary research that combines methodologies and sources from the fields of Art History, Old Norse-Icelandic manuscript studies, codicology, and Scandinavian history, this book explores both the illuminated manuscripts produced at Helgafell and the cultural and historical setting of the manuscript production. Equally, the book explores the broader European contexts of manuscript production at Helgafell, comparing the similar domestic artistic monuments and relevant historical evidence of Norwich and surrounding East Anglia in England, northern France, and the region between Bergen and Trondheim in western Norway. The book proposes that most of these workshops are related to ecclesiastical networks, as well as secular trade in the North Sea, which became an important economic factor to western Icelandic society in the fourteenth century. The book thereby contributes to a new and multidisciplinary area of research that studies not only one but several European cultures in relation to similar domestic artistic monuments and relevant historical evidence. It offers a detailed account of this cultural site in relation to its scribal and artistic connections with other ecclesiastical and secular scriptoria in the broader North Atlantic region.publishedVersio

Lena Liepe: Studies in Fourteenth Century Book Painting

Lena Liepe’s monograph “Studies in Fourteenth Century Book Painting” provides a long overdue and newly developed interdisciplinary approach to the overlapping fields of medieval art history and Old Norse-Icelandic philology. The author provides two in-depth articles on two separate illuminated manuscript groups from 14th century Iceland and shows in detail and with great success that the multidiciplinary research of the stated fields is indeed able to give new insights into the production and general cultural background of the investigated illuminated manuscripts. Liepe states at the beginning of her book that the work is supposed to be used by art historians and philologists alike. She also assumes that both groups do not necessarily have great knowledge of the other’s field of research. Thus, in the introduction chapter “the prerequisites” modern approaches to the complex meaning of style are explained with help of stylistic concepts developed by art historians Schapiro, Sauerländer, von Aachen and Davis. Following from this are the important philological characteristics for the grouping of illuminated manuscripts on philological grounds presented, giving not only room to the historical circumstances of production and a short introduction to the paleographic research between manuscripts and also for the well-received methodological theory of Karl G. Johansson on the Icelandic AM 242 fol. Codex Wormianus. Johansson mainly discusses the occurrence of palaeographic and orthographic variation in the manuscript in light of the specific situation of production. By dividing the written signs by their position and function both in regards to a strict linguistic system and its actual realization on the written parchment, the author reflects Johansson’s philological methodology in detail and tentatively discusses the possibility of transferring this method to the presented concept of style

Cultural Syncretism and Interpicturality: The Iconography of Throne Benches in Medieval Icelandic Book Painting

In relation to the major topic of the present volume, this article is intended to provide new methodological and iconographic insights into the cultural adaptation and integration of European iconographic motifs in the medieval western Scandinavian arts and culture, as well as the relations between the iconographic detail and its surrounding texts. At the same time, this article offers a new approach to existing research on the basis of two methodological theories hitherto little investigated in iconographic research: cultural syncretism and interpicturality. In archaeology and media studies, these approaches are used to interpret cultural–historical artefacts that were created for one and then reused in a new context which may alter their meaning. The present article seeks to explain how both meaning and appearance of a single motif change between the vernacular texts it accompanies, and how the working methods of the illuminators differ between manuscripts. As a qualitative example, the investigation will focus on a complex iconographic motif that is found in six Icelandic manuscripts from the fourteenth century, namely the feature of animal heads as extensions on throne seats. Although little studied in the context of manuscripts, this is a motif widely used throughout the Middle Ages and with various secular and religious connotations. In particular, this is linked to the specific narrative roles that iconographic details play in relation to the written text and generally to the physical objects that carry both text and iconography: the manuscripts.publishedVersio

Marginalia in Medieval Western Scandinavian Law Manuscripts

n the present chapter, the design of select margins of late medieval Old Norse manuscripts containing the Icelandic ‘Jónsbók’,‘Kristinréttr Árna biskups’ and Norwegian ‘Landslǫg’ law codes is addressed. In particular, it discusses the size and fillings of margins in these codices and the relation to their modes of use by original clients and later owners. Although it is well-known that Scandinavian law manuscripts contain a large number of notes written by both original and later users, the particular use of marginal spaces by original scribes and illuminators for glosses and other annotations and illuminations has scarcely been investigated to date. In my contribution, two distinctive features will be addressed:(1.) The different use of margins by Norwegian and Icelandic readers of the manuscripts, and (2.) the use of margins by illuminators surrounding the column(s) and incorporated initials.publishedVersio

A new approach for disclosure control in the IAB Establishment Panel : multiple imputation for a better data access

"For micro-datasets considered for release as scientific or public use files, statistical agencies have to face the dilemma of guaranteeing the confidentiality of survey respondents on the one hand and offering sufficiently detailed data on the other hand. For that reason a variety of methods to guarantee disclosure control is discussed in the literature. In this paper, we present an application of Rubin's (1993) idea to generate synthetic datasets from existing confidential survey data for public release. We use a set of variables from the 1997 wave of the German IAB Establishment Panel and evaluate the quality of the approach by comparing results from an analysis by Zwick (2005) with the original data with the results we achieve for the same analysis run on the dataset after the imputation procedure. The comparison shows that valid inferences can be obtained using the synthetic datasets in this context, while confidentiality is guaranteed for the survey participants." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))IAB-Betriebspanel, Datensicherheit, Datenschutz, Datenaufbereitung, Datenanonymisierung, Imputationsverfahren

Cascading Digital Options and the Evolution of Digital Infrastructures: The Case of IIoT

Digital infrastructures provide a space where possibilities for innovation continuously emerge. They are not stable entities but are evolving. Their boundaries are subject to constant negotiation among multiple organizational actors as well as changing connections of digital technologies, operations, and users. In this paper, we explore the evolution of an Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) infrastructure in a leading manufacturing company. We find that the IIoT infrastructure provided actionable spaces upon which organizational actors discovered opportunities for improving process performance which, in turn, led to investment decisions. We explain this process through the lens of digital options theory and highlight how IIoT infrastructure provides the material foundation for the identification of digital options, how the realization of digital options leads to the emergence of more digital options, and how these “cascading” digital options are implicated in the evolution of IIoT infrastructure. We discuss theoretical and practical implications