Dr. Matthew Driscoll
Arnamagnæan editions in the electronic age
The Arnamagnæan Institute in Copenhagen derives its name from the Icelandic scholar and antiquarian Árni Magnússon (1663-1730), who put together what is generally recognised as the most important collection of early Scandinavian manuscripts extant. Upon his death Árni Magnússon bequeathed his collection to the University of Copenhagen, along with an endowment from his private estate from which money was to be drawn for the publication of text editions and studies pertaining to the manuscripts in the collection. In 1760 the Arnamagnæan Foundation was created, the predecessor of the present-day Institute, and in 1772 a permanent Commission was established by King Christian VII as the governing body of that Foundation. The first text edition published under the auspices of the Commission appeared in that same year, and publication continued, if at times sporadically, down to the year 1938, when it was decided to publish a series of scholarly monographs under the general title Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana, forty-eight volumes of which have appeared thus far, and a new series of critical editions, Edition Arnamagnæanæ, which now number forty-four. A sister institute in Iceland, Stofnun Árna Magnússonar, where half of the Arnamagnæan manuscript collection is now housed, was founded in 1962 and has a similar series, Rit, begun in 1972, comprising both editions and monographs, of which 59 volumes have appeared.
At both institutes attempts are now being made to move from paper-based to electronic text editions. My presentation
will address in particular how the traditional editorial practices of the Arnamagnæan editions are being adapted to
the new medium, and how this new medium is making it possible to do things which Árni Magnússon could scarcely have imagined possible
Matthew Driscoll (mjd@hum.ku.dk) is lecturer in Old Norse philology (norrøn filologi) at Det Arnamagnæanske Institut, a department of the University of Copenhagen. His research interests include manuscript and textual studies, particularly in the area of Old and Early-Modern Icelandic. He is also involved in a number of projects to do with the digitisation and text-encoding of medieval manuscripts. Matthew Driscoll is a member of the Technical Council of the TEI-Consortium.
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