Þrjú frumbréf frá 15. - 16. öld

Abstract

Icelandic charters before 1570 are printed in Diplomatarium Islandicum (DI), and the oldest charters (until 1450) were also edited diplomatically by Stefán Karlsson in Islandske originaldipiomer indtil 1450. Since the publication of DI some previously unknown charters have been discovered in archives, mostly in Iceland but also abroad. Some of these were printed in the supplement to DI (1963) but a few charters from the second half of the fifteenth century and from the sixteenth century remain unedited. That situation needs to be remedied. In this article the author edits and comments upon three charters which are preserved in the British Isles, two in Ireland and one in England. The oldest charter dates from 1485 and has not been edited before. It is a court verdict concerning manslaughter, now preserved in Trinity College Library in Dublin (TCD MS 1944). The second charter is also a legal document, dating from 1501 and concerns the reimbursement of travel expenses to the bishop Gottskálk Nikulásson at Hólar. The charter is now preserved in Þjóðskjalasafn íslands, formerly in the Chapter Library of Wells Cathedral in Somerset. Its text was edited in DI VII no. 541 but from a seventeenth-century copy. The third document is a verdict from 1514 on inheritance claims and the handling of a certain family's property. It is preserved in Trinity College Library in Dublin (TCD MS 1036 a). Another contemporary exemplar of the verdict has been edited (DI VIII no. 402). The two exemplars are written by the same hand, but there is nevertheless some discrepancy between them.