Origin Legends and Foundation Myths in

• Main Author: Elizabeth Ashman Rowe
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: fláttr (also known as Einars fláttr Sokkasonar; Helga fláttr ok Úlfs; Játvar›ar; Bergen; Flat Island; Húnavatn; Norway; Reykjavík; Rowe; Iceland
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.462.3583; http://rp-www.arts.usyd.edu.au/arts/medieval/saga/pdf/441-rowe.pdf

Flateyjarbók (“The book of Flat Island”) is the name given to GKS 1005, fol., a manuscript now preserved at the Árna Stofnun Magnússonar in Reykjavík, Iceland. Flateyjarbók is the largest of the extant medieval Icelandic manuscripts and is beautifully illuminated with historiated initials. It contains 225 leaves, with the text laid out in two columns to the page. The manuscript was commissioned by Jón Hákonarson, a very wealthy farmer who lived at Ví›idalstunga in the Húnavatn district in the north of Iceland, and was undoubtedly written somewhere in the area, either at Ví›idalstunga or at the nearby monastery of fiingeyrar, or possibly to the east of Húnavatn, in Skagafjör›ur. The manuscript was begun by the priest Jón fiór›arson in 1387; his hand starts on 4 verso, originally the verso of the first leaf of the manuscript, and continues through the next-to-last line of the first column of 134 verso. On these pages he copied Eiríks saga ví›förla, Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar, and virtually all of Óláfs saga helga. Jón fiór›arson left Iceland for Bergen, Norway, in the summer of 1388, and the work of continuing Flateyjarbók fell to another priest, Magnús fiórhallsson, whose hand begins on the last line of the 442 Elizabeth Ashman Rowe first column of 134 verso and goes on until the end of the manuscript (apart from 23 leaves, now folios 188-210, which were added by fiorleifur Björnsson in the second half of the fifteenth century). After finishing Óláfs saga helga for Jón fiór›arson, Magnús copied Noregs konungatal, Sverris saga, Hákonar saga gamla, excerpts from the Óláfs saga helga by Styrmir fró›i, Grænlendinga