Minor Knowledge and Microhistory: Manuscript Culture in the Nineteenth Century. By Sigurđur Gylfi Magnússon and Davíđ Ólafsson

Abstract

Apart from the names of the authors, there is nothing about this book, neither the title nor table of contents, nor indeed the publisher's blurb or Library of Congress Subject Headings, that would suggest that it deals with manuscript culture in nineteenth-century Iceland. But so it is. There is nothing wrong in this, to be sure, as one of the more interesting things about pre-modern Iceland is the continued importance of chirographic transmission in the dissemination of at least certain types of texts, long after the arrival of the first printing press in the early sixteenth century. Iceland is not unique in this respect, but it is certainly among the élite, both as regards the extent and the tenacity of its post-print manuscript culture. The authors, Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon, Professor of Cultural History at the University of Iceland, and his younger colleague Davíð Ólafsson, Adjunct Lecturer in Cultural Studies at the same university, have written extensively on this topic, though hitherto chiefly in their native Icelandic. This book therefore provides a welcome opportunity for non-Icelandic readers to familiarize themselves with the work of these two scholars and the fascinating subject with which they deal. But the reader expecting to find a general introduction to or comparative study of ‘everyday writing practices among ordinary people in the long nineteenth century’ may well be surprised to find the book so focused on Iceland.