Two Icelandic Sixteenth-Century Music Fragments in Stockholm

Abstract

This article discusses fragments from two Icelandic music manuscripts from the sixteenth century that have survived at the royal Library in Stockholm, whose contents and cultural/liturgical context have not previously been examined. One is a vellum bifolium (Holm perg 8vo nr. 10, I b), the other consists of two individual paper folios that appear to have been later used as binding material (S. 252a). Both fragments contain Roman Catholic plainchants for the mass and office, but in Icelandic translation and thus presumably intended for use in an early Lutheran context. There is a certain overlap of material (two chants and fragments of a third are shared by both manuscripts), but the liturgical function is unclear. Many, but not all, of the chants found here belong to Christmastide; it seems as if the manuscripts from which the fragments came may have contained a loose selection of liturgical chants rather than a complete, ordered liturgy.

The chant texts appear to have been translated into Icelandic sometime between 1544 and 1562. One translation (of Christus resurgens est, romans 6:9) follows that of Oddur Gottskálksson’s New Testament translation of 1540, while the influence of neither the Danish hymnal (1569) nor Danish gradual (1573) can be detected. These two manuscript fragments are an important source since little is known about Icelandic music around the middle of the sixteenth century at all. the conservative approach to church singing suggested by these fragments may have been a cause of discord between the two Icelandic bishoprics. The strife mentioned in the preface to the 1594 Graduale may in part have had to do with the extent to which the old Roman Catholic material should be retained in the Lutheran liturgy and in what form. In the end, none of the chants in the Stockholm fragments made it into the 1594 Graduale, suggesting that the devout Lutheran Bishop Guðbrandur Þorláksson of Hólar was able to exercise full control when it came to deciding the specific details of the Icelandic liturgy, including the elimination of the chant translations found here.