Skrifandi bændur 1649

Abstract

In the summer of 1649, delegates at the Althing swore loyalty oaths to King Frederik III of Denmark. Amongst them were representatives of both the educated and the farmer classes: bishops, clergymen, officials and free farmers (lögskilabændur). The prelude to this occasion was a royal decree in the spring of that year, addressed to the Icelandic people, ordaining that its representatives at the Althing swear oaths to the king. Provosts (prófastar) and bailiffs (sýslumenn) around the country were responsible for holding local assemblies and synods to select these delegates. Icelandic documents pertaining to this are preserved in the Danish National Archives, in the department for Iceland, the Faroe Islands and Greenland. These documents are a goldmine for research on seventeenth-century Icelandic hands, as they contain the signatures of nearly every minister in the country in 1649 as well as those of around six hundred laymen. The names alone admittedly provide limited grounds for comparison; however, in some cases they can be used to show that a certain man did not copy a certain manuscript, and in others they can prove, to some degree of certainty, that the owner of a signature did produce a manuscript. The aim of this article is not to summarise a study of these hands; rather, it is to investigate whether these documents provide information which can illuminate the proportion of Icelandic farmers who were able to write in the mid-seventeenth century. The results of this study are that, in all likelihood, ca. 20–25% of free farmers (skattbændur) were able to write. In some areas, this ratio was considerably higher, suggested mainly by figures from Vestmannaeyjar.