Residents Event Calendar

Iceland—nowadays probably best known for its glaciers and volcanos, its financial crisis and its lively music scene—also has a long history as a hotbed of literary activity, starting with the Eddas and sagas of the medieval period and extending to the crime fiction of the present day. For most of that period, this literature circulated in handwritten form, as manuscripts, initially on calfskin, later on paper. The extent and quality of manuscript production in medieval Iceland is relatively well known; less well known is the fact that manuscript transmission remained the norm well into the modern era. Matthew will show some examples of Icelandic manuscript production from various periods, and discuss the nature of the literature they contain, their appearance and their significance for both Iceland and the wider world. Matthew is a Professor of Old Norse Philology at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, where he has been employed for the last 23 years. He studied in Scotland, Iceland and England, and has a doctorate from the University of Oxford. Most importantly, he is our own Barbara Driscoll’s son!