Archaeology in Focus: Manuscripts as Artifacts in Iceland's Middle Ages

Join the Calgary Public Library and the Archaeological Society of Alberta for a seminar exploring what medieval Icelandic manuscripts reveal about the country’s history and culture. While scholars have long valued these texts for their Eddas and sagas, recent research treats manuscripts as physical artifacts. This talk examines what they were made of, how they were produced, and how they functioned within social networks. Iceland serves as a unique case study, as its scribal culture persisted until the twentieth century, long after the advent of print elsewhere. The presentation considers manuscripts as repositories of DNA, ecosystems, and nodes in human connection to offer new insights into Iceland's second-millennium history. The speaker, Alaric Hall, is a researcher specializing in medieval Britain and Scandinavia with a background in Old Norse and Icelandic studies.