Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Laugavegur
From Lækjartorg, turn right into the short Bankastræti and on, up the small hill, into
Laugavegur
(hot spring road), the route once taken by local washerwomen to the
springs in Laugardalur. This is Iceland's major commercial artery, holding the main
shops and a fair sprinkling of cafés, bars and restaurants. Not surprisingly therefore,
on Friday and Saturday evenings in summer it's bumper to bumper with cars, horns
blaring and with well-oiled revellers hanging out of the windows. However, before
you give yourself over to extensive retail therapy, there are a couple of more cerebral
attractions worthy of your time and attention in this part of town.
1
Þjóðmenningarhúsið
Hverfisgata 15 • Daily 11am-5pm; Jón Sigurðsson room Sun only, same hours • 1000kr •
W
thjodmenning.is
The grand former National Library, now the
Þjóðmenningarhúsið
(Culture House)
has the country's largest and best exhibition of
medieval manuscripts
. What makes
this display of treasures particularly engaging is its accessibility; gone is the tedious
intellectual pontificating which so often accompanies Icelandic history, instead you
can get close up to these documents and see for yourself what all the fuss is about - an
erudite account beside each manuscript serving as an adequate summary.
The ground floor
he
ground floor
's warren of darkened exhibition halls, illuminated only for a few
minutes at a time by soft overhead lighting, contains about a dozen ornately decorated
documents, themselves in glass cases, including the magnificent
Flateyjarbók
,
which
was finally returned to Iceland in 1971 after spending three centuries in Denmark. The
largest of all medieval Icelandic vellums preserved today, the topic was written towards
the end of the fourteenth century and recounts mostly sagas of kings. However, it is
also the only document to contain the
Saga of the Greenlanders
, which relates Leifur
Eiríksson's exploration in Vínland. Look out, too, for the
Staðarhólsbók Grágásar
, one
of the earliest existing manuscripts, dating from around 1270, which runs through laws
from the period of the Icelandic Commonwealth, several of which are still in force
MAGNUSSON'S MANUSCRIPTS
Despite so many of Iceland's sagas and histories being written down by medieval monks for
purposes of posterity, there existed no suitable means of protecting them from the country's
damp climate, and within a few centuries these unique artefacts were rotting away. Enter
Árni Magnússon
(1663-1730), humanist, antiquarian and professor at the University of
Copenhagen, who attempted to ensure the preservation of as many of the manuscripts as
possible by sending them to Denmark for safekeeping. Although he completed his task in 1720,
eight years later many of them went up in flames in the Great Fire of Copenhagen, and Árni
died a heartbroken man fifteen months later, never having accepted his failure to rescue the
manuscripts, despite braving the flames himself. As he noted at the time of the blaze, “these are
the topic which are to be had nowhere in the world”; the original
Íslendingabók
, for example,
the most important historical record of the Settlement of Iceland, written on calfskin, was
destroyed, though luckily it had been copied by a priest in Iceland before it left the country.
The manuscripts remained apart from their country of origin until long after Icelandic
independence in 1944. In 1961, legislation was passed in Denmark decreeing that manuscripts
composed or translated by Icelanders should be returned, but it took a further ruling by the
Danish Supreme Court, in March 1971, to get things moving, as the Danes were reluctant to
see these works of art leave their country. Finally, however, in April that year, a Danish naval
frigate carried the first texts,
Konungsbók Eddukvæða
and
Flateyjarbók
, across the
Atlantic into Reykjavík, to be met by crowds bearing signs reading “
handritin heim
” (“the
manuscripts are home”) and waving Icelandic flags. Even so, the transfer of the manuscripts
wasn't completed until 1997.
