Konungs skuggsjá [The King's Mirror] and Women Patrons and Readers in Late Medieval and Early Modern Iceland

This article examines the numerous late medieval manuscripts of the Old Norse Konungs skuggsjá [The King's Mirror], which have been critically neglected. It analyses the manuscripts' physical aspects (size, layout, decorations, marginalia), provenance, and socio-historical and literary context, and the relationship between these features. Although Konungs skuggsjá is usually discussed in a thirteenth-century Norwegian and royal context, the article shows that the treatise was a popular text in Iceland in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and that it is preserved in several prestigous manuscripts which were once impressive codices. Three books belonging to this group are examined in more detail, and the article argues that they provide tantalising insights into what kind of people read the text-namely aristocrats, primarily women, in Northern Iceland-and its function in their cultural sphere. On one hand, the text and its presence in an élite manuscript expressed one family's political and social identity. On the other hand, manuscript provenance, marginalia, and the degree of wear show that the text was used as an educational tool for moral and spiritual instruction in the early education of children, and women could also have read it for their own intellectual enjoyment.