The Long Coexistence of Parchment and Paper in Late Medieval and Early Modern Icelandic Manuscript Culture

This article examines early uses of paper in Iceland in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and late uses of parchment and palimpsests in the seventeenth century, arguing that rather than being in competition for dominance, parchment and paper coexisted for centuries. Paper in fifteenth-century Iceland was rare and difficult to source, being available only to a narrow segment of the population with connections outside the island. Pragmatic literacy drove an increase in paper use in the sixteenth century among the upper echelons of society, and a growing volume of paper was imported for the printing press, supporting the post-Reformation expansion of religious book ownership in the late sixteenth century. However, Icelandic patrons and scribes were slow to adopt paper as a potential replacement for high-status parchment manuscripts. Writing-quality paper was present in Iceland for well over a century before having a significant impact on manuscript culture. By the early seventeenth century, paper had become part of the material culture of most, if not all, strata of society. Parchment was, however, still used for some types of manuscripts, particularly showpiece manuscripts, copies of the law code Jónsbók, and perpetual calendars. A correlation thus exists between the content and function of a manuscript and the writing surface. Unusually, little evidence exists for deliberate mixing of paper and parchment as writing surfaces in book production, in contrast to the common fifteenth-century practice in mainland Europe of constructing mixed-material quires. Despite the long coexistence of paper and parchment in Iceland, one rarely finds the two materials bound together except as distinct codicological units combined by later users.