Hidden Harmonies: Manuscript and Print on the North Atlantic Fringe, 1500–1900 ed. by Matthew James Driscoll and Nioclás Mac Cathmhaoil

Abstract

Reviewed by: Hidden Harmonies: Manuscript and Print on the North Atlantic Fringe, 1500–1900 ed. by Matthew James Driscoll and Nioclás Mac Cathmhaoil Aileen Douglas Matthew James Driscoll and Nioclás Mac Cathmhaoil, eds. Hidden Harmonies: Manuscript and Print on the North Atlantic Fringe, 1500–1900. Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana 54. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2021. xv + 510 pp. + 65 color plates, 5 halftones, 1 map. €61. ISBN: 978-87-63546881. Introducing Hidden Harmonies, the editors invite the reader to apprehend late manuscript culture in Ireland, Scotland, Iceland, and the Faroe Islands as "a homogenous cultural bloc whose constituents responded to influences from the European 'centre' in similar ways" (ix). The collection of thirteen essays begins with a wide-ranging consideration by Jürg Glauser of the persistence of the "simultaneity of media," of script and print, into the nineteenth century on the "Atlantic fringe." Deirdre Nic Mhathúna follows with a meticulous account of the scribal transmission of the works of the seventeenth-century Irish poet Piaras Feiritéar, whose poems did not appear in print in Irish until 1903. Moving north and west, Gu∂rún Ingólfsdóttir describes the manuscript miscellany of the Icelandic housewife, Gu∂rún Jónsdóttir (1741–96). Significantly, while Gu∂rún owned the manuscript—a medley of devotional materials, useful knowledge, folklore, and songs—it was not in her hand. The essay argues that strong links to folklore, as well [End Page 172] as the absence of devotional materials already printed, distinguish popular manuscripts such as that of Gu∂rún from those of elite women. With Katarzyna Anna Kapitan's essay, the volume moves to consider what she terms "print-based manuscripts" (82). Her fascinating account in "Manuscripts Derived from Printed Editions in the Transmission History of Hrómundar Saga Greipssonar" begins by asking whether the use of a printed text as source led to more conservative scribal copies, and she finds that this is "only partially true," with factors such as the purpose of the copy and place of the copyist (within or outside Iceland) being more influential. Copying from printed sources also features in Liam Mac Mathúna's vivid account of two manuscripts by the Irish scribe Tadhg Ó Neachtain (1671–1752). Mac Mathúna's main emphasis, however, is on the elements of individuality in the manuscripts: the recorded dialogue between Tadhg and his father Séan in National Library of Ireland MS G 198, which allows the warm relationship between the two to emerge, and Tadhg's recording of "major contemporary domestic events" in British Library Egerton MS 198 (139). Margrét Eggertsdóttir's contribution to the volume provides both a useful overview of the genres of seventeenth-century Icelandic poetry and discusses the dissemination, into the nineteenth century, of one of its most famous works, the Hymns of the Passion (Passíusálmar) of Hallgrímur Pétursson (1614–74), a clergymember with an eventful early life. Hallgrímur's hymns were first printed in 1666, but the author also made five copies of his hymns that he dedicated and sent to recipients "whom he trusted to judge his work fairly and spread the word" (159). The prodigious life's work of the Icelandic scribe Magnús í Tjaldanesi (1835–1921) is the focus of the contribution of M. J. Driscoll, one of the volume's coeditors. Extant manuscripts by Magnús comprise about twenty-eight thousand pages, more than eight million words, and Driscoll estimates that this is only a fraction of what the scribe produced. Notably, Magnús dedicated himself to "highly popular prose genres—fornaldarsögur, riddarasögur, translations of German Volksbücher," rather than the more usual poetry (189). An unusual feature of his work is that each of the volumes in his collection of sagas, twenty in all, comprises exactly eight hundred pages. Although he adopted certain features of print culture, including prefaces, pagination, and running titles, Magnús appears not to have aspired to print. He did, however, take steps to preserve his work. Driscoll [End Page 173] recounts how, in 1909, Magnús made his one and only trip to Reykjavik to see...