The Codex Trajectinus of the Prose Edda
An unexpected journey
On 24 November 1643, the Oriental scholar Christian Rau (Ravius) from Berlin donated a thirteenth-century manuscript from Persia, an early sixteenth-century manuscript in Turkish from the Ottoman Empire, and a late sixteenth-century manuscript from Iceland to the City and University Library of Utrecht.
The first two he had acquired in Constantinople (Istanbul) in 1640, but the last one no doubt elsewhere. The manuscript from Iceland has a version of the Prose Edda, a text that gives the fullest literary version of Norse mythology. The Codex Trajectinus (Ms. 1374) is one of the eight copies of the Edda in the prose version that predates c. 1600, and is one of the four principal manuscripts now extant. Among the early manuscripts it is the only one found in a collection outside Iceland and Scandinavia. Its journey from Iceland to Utrecht can be reconstructed, albeit with several blank spaces and uncertainties.
The donation by Ravius to Utrecht University Library
Christian Rau or Ravius (1613-77) donated the Icelandic manuscript to the Utrecht City and University Library as part of his efforts to secure a teaching post at the university, as will be discussed below. His primary focus was on Oriental languages, but the donation of the Icelandic manuscript signaled to the city council that he was also versed in the Scandinavian languages. This, at least, can be gleaned from the extensive Latin dedication on the endleaf at the back of the manuscript. In translation it reads:
That this may bring fortune and happiness to the city and academy of Utrecht! Christianus Ravius of Berlin (donates) this ancient Icelandic manuscript codex called Edda, or poetic mythology of the old Icelanders, to which is added the Scaldra, or their metrical account of various kinds of poems, in which they sang their deeds and histories, just as the Britons and our nations once recited various histories of their people at feasts at the table in poetry, to the Public Library of Utrecht and to the late descendants of posterity. The whole world will be covered by learning, and northern languages and histories will be learned by his example, who learned this language in Denmark. He freely and deservedly gave this gift. Done on the 24th of November 1643 (for the Latin text, see Van Eden 1913, iv; Toomer 2023, 272-3).
These are lofty words, similar to what he inscribed in the two other manuscripts he donated, now Ms. 1442 (the Persian ‘Utrecht Zīj’) and Ms. 1475 (Turkish chronicle), of which he also described the content. One wonders what impression the three ‘exotic’ manuscripts and their donor made on the members of the Utrecht city council. They were probably least impressed by the manuscript of the Prose Edda. It measures just c. 20 x 16,6 cm, and has 52 paper leaves bound in a limp parchment binding. It is written in a small script with unfamiliar letters, strange words and abbreviations, and it lacks decoration or any other attractive features. The manuscript does indeed contain both Norse mythology and treatises about skaldic poetry, as Ravius describes it, but he does not attribute the Edda to the Icelandic historian poet Snorri Sturlason (1179-1241). And this name would also not have meant anything to members of the city council, the librarian or even university professors. Utrecht University had just been founded in 1636, and questions about theology and philosophy dominated the intellectual discourse. Tales about Odin and Thor were not instantly bringing fortune and happiness to Utrecht as Ravius so eagerly hoped.
The manuscripts of the Prose Edda
The manuscript Ravius donated contains the four main parts of the Edda, although they are not all complete. The four sections are: the prologue (the first leaf is missing), Gylfaginning (a question-and-answer survey of Norse mythology); the Skáldskaparmál (on poetic diction), including the poem Gróttasǫngr (the mill’s songs) and Nafnaþulur (a list of names in verse); and the Háttatal (on varieties of metres), with the last three leaves lost.
The inclusion and exclusion of smaller texts, such as the songs and poem in Skáldskaparmál, and the loss of leaves applies to all the four major codices of the Prose Edda. Of these, three are of the fourteenth century. The Utrecht manuscript is much later, but is generally believed to be a good copy of an exemplar of the thirteenth century. The four codices usually have the following sigla:
R = Codex Regius (Reykjavík, Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies, GKS 2367 4°), c. 1300.
T = Codex Trajectinus (Utrecht, University Library, Ms. 1374), 1590s
U = Codex Upsaliensis (Uppsala, University Library, DG 11), c. 1300-25.
W = Codex Wormianus (Copenhagen, University, Arnamagnæan Institute, AM 242 fol), c. 1350.
The relationship between these four codices and four other early manuscripts or manuscript fragments (of which one is a direct copy of R) has been the topic of some debate. On the whole, scholars agree that R and T are closely related: they share a number of errors not found in U and W. R and T thus have a common ancestor, a manuscript in which these common errors were already present. W also shares a number of errors with R and T, suggesting that RTW have a more remote common ancestor. U stands apart from the other three, and is probably closer to the original Snorri Sturlason wrote in the 1220s – of which RTW may represent a longer version he redacted himself. U gives a shorter text, is the only manuscript in which the Prose Edda is attributed to Snorri, and one of its additional manuscripts is the Genealogy of the Sturlungs. The fragment of the Edda, Arnamagnæan Institute, AM 748 II 4to (C), of c. 1400, contains readings that are also judged to be closer to the original than the other manuscripts (Þorgeirsson 2017).
Writing the Codex Trajectinus
Of the four main codices, T is the only one from after the fourteenth century, and the only one written on paper. In the seventeenth century there was a renewal of interest in eddic and skaldic poetry in Icelandic scholarly circles. T is the oldest example of this renewed study, and is the earliest of the post-reformation manuscripts containing works of Old-Icelandic prose. It is also earlier than the redaction Magnús Ólafsson made of the Prose Edda in 1609, the Laufás Edda, which was copied many times thereafter. The upsurge in the production of Icelandic manuscripts coincided with the triumph of Protestantism in Iceland and the gradual replacement of parchment by paper as text carriers. About 200 parchment and 100 Icelandic paper manuscripts survive from the period between 1539 (the oldest paper manuscript attested) to 1600 (Driscoll 2019, 8). The paper of the Codex Trajectinus has as watermark a circle with a shield in the middle and the letters BENSEN around it, corresponding to Briquet 1001, although it is not an exact match (De Ruiter 1985, 2; New Briquet I, 77, no. 1001). It was manufactured in Bensen in north Bohemia (now Benešov), and documents with the watermark Briquet 1001 are found in Hamburg (1561?, 1603) and Rijnsburg near Leiden (1601). This agrees very well with the date of the manuscript.
The scribe wrote the Prose Edda in a Gothic cursiva recentior: a single-compartment a (a), tall s (ſ) and f on the baseline, and loops on the ascenders of b, h, k and l. The same scribe wrote Arnamagnæan Institute, AM Dipl. Isl. LX 9, an attestation written in 1603 by Páll Jónsson (Faulkes 1985, 16). He also wrote Pall a mic (Páll owns me) and 1600 on the recto of the first flyleaf. This flyleaf is actually a letter from Bjarni Jónsson to his brother Páll written in 1595, and Páll’s address is on the recto side and the text on the verso. After completing the Edda, Páll must have bound it together with the letter not long afterwards, between 1595 when the letter was written and 1600 when he wrote that date on the flyleaf. Páll was a member of a court in Ögur in 1604 and lived with his father, the former priest Jón Loptsson (1564-fl. 1604). Both came from Þernuvík in Ögurhreppi at the Ísafjarðardjúp, in north-west Iceland (Faulkes 1985, 15-16).
From Iceland to Denmark
By 1606 the manuscript had changed hands, as 1606 ii vetur I olld is noted on the flyleaf in a different hand than that of Páll Jónsson. Other persons added scribbles and a curious verse on the second flyleaf (Homan 1976). On both flyfeaves is noted Þessa bok a eg Jon Gissurson ‘I, Jón Gissurson, own this book’. He has been identified as Jón Gissurarson (c. 1590-1648), a scholar and copyist of sagas who lived in Núpur on the north coast of the Dýrafjörður.
The next owner of T we can identify from the note on the inside of the front cover Jon Ara Son a bokina 1626 12 Martii (Jón Arason owns the book) and on fol. 1r Bokinn Edda er þetta Jone Arasyne tilheӱrande Anno 1626 (This is the book Edda belonging to Jón Arason). 12 March 1626 may well be the day Jón Arason (1606-73) acquired the manuscript. He was the son of Ari Magnusson (1571-1652), the ‘sheriff’ (sýslumaður) of Ögur and son in law of Guðbrandur Þorláksson (1541?-1627), bishop of Hólar in northern Iceland and a prominent champion of the Icelandic language and culture.
Jón Arason studied in Copenhagen from 1623 to 1628, and returned to Iceland the next year. In 1632 he became rector at a school at Skálholt, in the south of Iceland, before becoming a priest at Vatnsfjörður in 1636. In 1625-6 there was an epidemic in Denmark, so Arason returned to Iceland, and it was on that occasion he obtained the manuscript. He probably took it with him when he went back to Denmark and donated or sold the manuscript between 1626 and 1629 (Faulkes 1985, 15-16). We know of two persons who consulted it afterwards: Ole Worm and Sveinn Jónsson.
Ole Worm and the Codex Trajectinus
Ole Worm (1588-1654) was a Danish scholar who taught classical language, physics and medicine at the University of Copenhagen (Grell 2022). He was also interested in Scandinavian antiquities, especially in runes. In 1626 Arngrímur Jónsson (1586-1648) donated the manuscript now known as the Codex Wormianus (W) to the chancellor Christian Friis, whom by 1628 had passed it on to Worm. This manuscript had previously belonged to the aforementioned bishop Guðbrandur Þorláksson. Jonssón was a relative of the bishop (just like Arason) and was raised in his household.
Ole Worm thus had a manuscript of the Edda of his own, but certain parts were missing. When Arason was in Copenhagen, he knew of Worm, but never met him (Schepelern 1965-8, III, 368, no. 1641). So Arason could not have given T to Worm directly, yet at some stage Worm was able to study it. He wrote deest folium unum on fol. 1r and hic paragraphus deest in majori on fol. 26v. He knew that these parts were missing because he had compared T to W. And where W misses the final section of Skáldskaparmál, he notes in T on fol. 38r hic desinit mea Edda et incipit Grammatica (‘Here my Edda ends and the Grammar begins’). There are in all three passages in which T is more complete than W, and Worm had these copied on paper and inserted in W. The scribe of the second passage was Sveinn Jónsson, who attended the University of Copenhagen from 1635 to 1637 before returning to Iceland. He was a kind of assistant to Worm, who no doubt asked him to copy the text from T and perhaps another manuscript into W (Faulkes 1985, 12-14). Worm mentions that Jónsson cleaned W with urine in the biting frost (Epistola 206).
It is not at all certain Worm actually owned T; the remark ‘Here my Edda ends’ would be strange if T was also in his possession. In May 1635 he writes to his learned brother in law Stephan Stephanius (1599-1650) in Sorø, west of Copenhagen, that the Edda is not easy to obtain, and refers only to the parchment manuscript (W) which Stephanius saw at his place (Epistola 176). We may infer that T was owned by a good friend with whom Worm discussed the Edda, someone like Stephanus, although there are no indications he ever possessed it. In 1639 Stephanius received the current Codex Upsalaniensis (U) from Brynjólfur Sveinsson, later Bishop of Skálholt (Pálsson 2002, 13). Stephanus immediately sent it to Worm to compare it with his Edda (Epistola 194). In 1643 Sveinsson also obtained what is now the Codex Regius (R), which he sent as a gift to king Frederik III in 1661. By that time T had already left the country.
Ravius in Denmark
It remains unknown who owned T after Jón Arason disposed of it. Neither Worm nor Stephanus mentions another Edda manuscript apart from W and U. Yet we know that at some stage, most probably in the period 1635-7, Worm had access to it. It is likely that Ravius acquired T when he was in was in Copenhagen, which he visited for the first time in 1637 after he had graduated in Oriental languages at the University of Wittenberg. He also visited Johannes Meursius (1579-1639), professor of History in Sorø, whom Stephanius succeeded there. Ravius’ travels eventually brought him to Constantinople, and in 1641 we went to England, where news arrived that his brother Johann Rau, professor of Eloquence in Sorø, had fallen ill. In the summer of 1642 Ravius visited Johann in Sorø and two of his brothers in Copenhagen, in the meantime searching for an academic position (Toomer 2023, 55-60). In October 1642 Worm writes to Stephanius that ‘Stentor’ (Loud mouth) had criticized a letter of his to Stephanius on a Greek technicality, and Stephanius replies that this ‘Alastor’ (Scoundrel) is fishing for a job from the Danish Chancellor, who is wont to prefer German to Danish scholars (Epistolae 245 and 246). Ravius clearly did not make a positive impression on either Worm or Stephanius, but in the end he failed to find employment, and in the summer of 1643 he continued his search in the United Provinces.
We may conclude that Ravius did not acquire T directly from Worm or Stephanius, if these had possessed it in the first place. Yet Ravius visits to Copenhagen and Sorø in 1642, the network he maintained there and the lessons in Icelandic he may have taken (as appears from the text of his dedication of T) make it likely that he obtained T from a member of the learned circles of which Ravius and Stephanius were also part. This circle and their connections had access to all the four principal manuscripts of the Prose Edda in the period of the 1630s and 1640s. An alternative route may also be possible, but the theory that the German Orientalist Johannes Elichmann had taken it from Worm to Leyden, where he died in 1639, so that Ravius acquired it there (Kålund 1900, lviii-lix), has been refuted by Anthony Faulkes (1985, 14-15).
After the donation
On 24 November 1643 Ravius pleaded for the City Council (vroedschap) of Utrecht that the University Library would buy his Oriental manuscripts which he had left for safekeeping by the Amsterdam merchant Gerbrand Ansloo, who had died unexpectedly that year. The three manuscripts he donated were part of his overtures, and after having delivered a lecture he was allowed to teach Oriental languages at the University for a year (Kernkamp 1936, 178, 193-4; Toomer 2023, 56-83). Later on he lectured in Amsterdam, Oxford, Uppsala and Frankfurt an der Oder, where he died in 1677. Unaware of what exactly they had been gifted, the City Council paid little attention to the Edda manuscript, which first appears on p. 32 of the Auctarium Catalogi Bibliothecae Trajectinae Batavae of 1754 (with shelfmark N. 260. g). The entry was read by Friedrich Heinrich von der Hagen (1780-1856), who in 1809 tried to gain access to the manuscript, but because of the holidays the library was closed, and his inquiries remained unanswered (von der Hagen 1812, cviii-cix). His letter was added at the back of T.
In 1846, two centuries after the donation, the Utrecht lawyer Christiaan Lodewijk Schüller tot Peursum (1813-60) was the first to write a short description of the manuscript. This was picked up in Denmark, and in the 1850s and 1898 the manuscript was on loan in Copenhagen, where Jón Sigurðsson and Finnur Jónsson made transcriptions (Faulkes 1985, 21-22). The latter made use of T in his editions of the Prose Edda published in 1898, 1926 and 1931 (see Jónsson 1931 and later Holtsmark and Helgason 1950). Willem van Eeden produced a diplomatic edition in his dissertation from 1913. Thus T was able to take its place alongside the other three principal manuscripts of the Prose Edda.
When in a large book published about Utrecht University Library and her treasures, a colour reproduction of fol. 1r of T was included, it can be said that T was recognized as one of the most important manuscripts of the library (van Someren 1909, p. 32/33). It had finally brought ‘fortune and happiness to the city and academy of Utrecht’. In 2025 and 2026 the Codex Trajectinus of the Prose Edda will be shown in the exhibition World in Words, showcasing Iceland's most treasured cultural artefacts in Edda, The House of Icelandic, that opened in 2024. Four centuries after it had left the island, it is finally on a journey back home.
Author
Bart Jaski, June 2025