Images from
This illustration was likely created by
The last page of the manuscript lists three names which likely represent the earliest owners of SAM 66: Gísli Gíslason (1797 - 1758) from Skörð in Reykjahverfi; St. Petersen, who has not been identified; and Magnús Guðmundsson, a farmer at Sandur in Aðaldalur. Magnús' daughter, Elín Sigríður emigrated to Canada in 1876 and took the manuscript with her. Elín Sigríður's farm near Gimli, Manitoba was called Melsted which also became the family's surname in Canada.
The Icelandic counsel to Minnesota, Örn Arnar, bought the manuscript from one of Elín Sigríður´s descendents, Ken Melsted in Wynyard, Saskatchewan and donated it to the Ární Magnússon Institute in Iceland on February 2, 2000.
The manuscript is now known either by the title
The purpose of the project was to create a prototype for a digital image repository and web page for illustrations of Old Norse gods and heroes from manuscripts and early print sources.
I used a Roma Schema with the modules:
All proper nouns for the metadata for the illustrations were marked up with TEI P5 by using: <gi>persName</gi> for beings such as gods, giants, humans, authors, illustrators etc. and <gi>name</gi> for animals, monsters, and artifacts. The <att>xml:id</att>s for proper nouns are always mixed case abbreviations that begin with a capital. The <gi>list</gi> elements always have <att>type</att> and usually have <att>subtype</att> as well. All other TEI tags such as: <placeName/> for places, <orgName/> for archives, and <person/> were used in the manner demonstrated by the TEI P5 guidelines. I used the <att>xml:lang</att> for all of these elements. The keyword items for all proper nouns were linked to further descriptive data in a Names directory (names.xml).
I created additional keyword items consisting of simple nouns, which were marked up as <gi>term</gi> to correspond to names of artifacts, animals, and monsters, e.g. Megingjörð = belt, Sleipnir = horse, Jörmungandr = serpent. The keyword items for all simple nouns were also entered in the names.xml file. The <att>xml:id</att>s for simple nouns are not abbreviated, always begin in lower case, are always in English, and are camel back when consisting of more than one word.
The critical approach for the selection of illustrations is focused through the theoretical lens of Material Philology which considers books and their material details, such as covers and illustrations, as cultural artifacts. This selection criteria results in a repository of images that is capable of revealing aspects of book history, culture, and production that the words of the texts alone cannot provide. Consequently, iterations of illustrations with minimal differences are not only included but valued for their research potential, e.g., illustrations from the first and second editions of
The web page prototype for the repository will incorporate Web 2.0 principles to facilitate scholarly research and knowledge dissemination and to enable participation from users at all levels of interest.
Old Norse orthography was the preferred representation for all names, e.g. Þōrr for Thor, and was used in a main title for each illustration with English orthography appearing in a subtitle. Keyword items were created for both Old Norse and English spelling and orthographies.
The spelling conventions for Old Norse conform to the practice established in
In the
Richard Wagner based Donner in