Medieval seminar
Stefan Drechsler will discuss the important fourteenth-century manuscript Flateyjarbók, focussing on the illuminations (see abstract below). The seminar will be followed by drinks sold at a moderate price, and a pub trip.
Please contact Jóhanna Katrín Friðriksdóttir (jkf@hi.is) or Viðar Pálsson (vp@hi.is) for further information.
Stefan Drechsler:
Flateyjarbók and Europe? An investigation of art-historical connections to contemporary art from Iceland, Norway, Denmark and Great Britain's East-Anglia
Today, the largest fourteenth-century Icelandic manuscript GKS 1005 fol. Flateyjarbók is not only one of the most important sources for many of the kings' sagas and most of the short tales of medieval Icelanders (þættir) but it is also renowned for its unique book illumination. Unlike all other kings' sagas manuscripts, Flateyjarbók includes several historical illuminations and scenes in the marginalia which do not only support and illustrate the beginning of the main sagas but some þættir, too.
In the paper some of these historical illuminations will be presented and explained through the text they initiate. Then, their design and style will be compared to a number of selected illuminated manuscripts from fourteenth-century Iceland, altar frontals from Trondheim and Bergen in Norway and several contemporary murals from Denmark, which all show similar design patterns in subject matters. Additionally, selected decorated folios of manuscripts of the East Anglian school of manuscript illumination (most active in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth century) will be presented and compared to three richly decorated folio leaves from Flateyjarbók.
The general intention is to point out that the illumination of the Codex Flateyensis follows patterns of contemporary art from Northern and Western Europe and took a strong influence in technique and style from East Anglian gothic manuscript illumination. So Flateyjarbók is not only a well-known statement for vernacular book painting of late fourteenth-century Iceland but also a (considerably younger) child of contemporary European romanesque and gothic illumination.
Stefan Drechsler completed his MA degree from the Medieval Icelandic Studies programme at the University of Iceland and is about to finish his magister degree from the University of Kiel.
