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This article offers a first critical edition of Nokkrar eftirtakanligar smáhistoríur samantíndar til fróðleiks 1783, an Icelandic translation of sections of Andreas Hondorff’s Promptuarium exemplorum (“Repository of exempla”), which survives as Item 10 of Reykjavík, Landsbókasafn Íslands – Háskólabókasafn, JS 405 8vo (fols 25r–25r–56r), a paper codex written between 1780 and 1791 by the farmer Ólafur Jónsson í Arney (c. 1722–1800). The Promptuarium was a highly popular compendium gathering wonders, agades, parables, and legends from antiquity, late antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance arranged according to the Ten Commandments. It found an ever-expanding audience among Lutherans interested in wisdom drawn from Scriptures, history, and the natural world and circulated widely in Europe in both German and Latin. The present study demonstrates that in all likelihood Ólafur Jónsson translated sections of the rearranged Latin text of the Promptuarium published by Philip Lonicer (1532– 1599) in 1575 under the title Theatrum historicum.

Volume 2 A Cultural History of Color in the Medieval Age covers the period 500 to 1400. The medieval age saw an extraordinary burst of color - from illuminated manuscripts and polychrome sculpture to architecture and interiors, and from enamelled and jewelled metalwork to colored glass and the exquisite decoration of artefacts. Color was used to denote affiliation in heraldry and social status in medieval clothes. Color names were created in various languages and their resonance explored in poems, romances, epics, and plays. And, whilst medieval philosophers began to explain the rainbow, theologians and artists developed a color symbolism for both virtues and vices. Color shapes an individual’s experience of the world and also how society gives particular spaces, objects, and moments meaning. The 6 volume set of the Cultural History of Color examines how color has been created, traded, used, and interpreted over the last 5000 years. The themes covered in each volume are color philosophy and science; color technology and trade; power and identity; religion and ritual; body and clothing; language and psychology; literature and the performing arts; art; architecture and interiors; and artefacts. Volume 2 in the Cultural History of Color set. General Editors: Carole P. Biggam and Kirsten Wolf

Volume 2 A Cultural History of Color in the Medieval Age covers the period 500 to 1400. The medieval age saw an extraordinary burst of color - from illuminated manuscripts and polychrome sculpture to architecture and interiors, and from enamelled and jewelled metalwork to colored glass and the exquisite decoration of artefacts. Color was used to denote affiliation in heraldry and social status in medieval clothes. Color names were created in various languages and their resonance explored in poems, romances, epics, and plays. And, whilst medieval philosophers began to explain the rainbow, theologians and artists developed a color symbolism for both virtues and vices. Color shapes an individual’s experience of the world and also how society gives particular spaces, objects, and moments meaning. The 6 volume set of the Cultural History of Color examines how color has been created, traded, used, and interpreted over the last 5000 years. The themes covered in each volume are color philosophy and science; color technology and trade; power and identity; religion and ritual; body and clothing; language and psychology; literature and the performing arts; art; architecture and interiors; and artefacts. Volume 2 in the Cultural History of Color set. General Editors: Carole P. Biggam and Kirsten Wolf

The chapter gives an overview of the life, education, and scholarly work of Grímur Thorkelin, an Icelander, and Rasmus Rask, a Dane. It assesses the reception of their research and the impact their scholarship had on future philologists. It demonstrates that Rask exercised considerable influence on philology, especially Danish philology, whereas Thorkelin’s claim to fame is limited to his work on Beowulf. What these two figures had in common, however, was their importance to early nineteenth-century Romanticism, and in particular, the resurrecting of the glorious ancient past of the Nordic countries. The work of Thorkelin and Rask invigorated interest in, and appreciation of, the shared Germanic past of Britain and Scandinavia.

The article examines the use of the color brown in Old Norse-Icelandic literature, which is encoded bybrúnnandjarpr. More specifically, it seeks to determine through linguistic categorization the objects about which brown is used and to determine on the basis of its frequency whether for Old Norse-Icelandic brown should be placed in the earlier stages of the evolution of color terms or if it should be assigned to the later stages. The data show thatbrúnnis the more frequently used term, though the earliest texts suggest that bothbrúnnandjarprwere contextually restricted. Gradually,brúnncame to be applied to a wider range of objects, whereasjarprremained a secondary color term. As a basic color term,brúnnshould be assigned a fairly late stage in the temporal-evolutionary order of basic color terms.

The human face has the capacity to generate expressions associated with a wide range of affective states. Despite the fact that there are few words to describe human facial behaviors, the facial muscles allow for more than a thousand different facial appearances. Some examples of feelings that can be expressed are anger, concentration, contempt, excitement, nervousness, and surprise. Regardless of culture or language, the same expressions are associated with the same emotions and vary only in intensity. Using modern psychological analyses as a point of departure, this essay examines descriptions of human facial expressions as well as such bodily “symptoms” as flushing, turning pale, and weeping in Old Norse-Icelandic literature. The aim is to analyze the manner in which facial signs are used as a means of non-verbal communication to convey the impression of an individual's internal state to observers. More specifically, this essay seeks to determine when and why characters in these works are described as expressing particular facial emotions and, especially, the range of emotions expressed. The Sagas andþættirof Icelanders are in the forefront of the analysis and yield well over one hundred references to human facial expression and color. The examples show that through gaze, smiling, weeping, brows that are raised or knitted, and coloration, the Sagas andþættirof Icelanders tell of happiness or amusement, pleasant and unpleasant surprise, fear, anger, rage, sadness, interest, concern, and even mixed emotions for which language has no words. The Sagas andþættirof Icelanders may be reticent in talking about emotions and poor in emotional vocabulary, but this poverty is compensated for by making facial expressions signifiers of emotion. This essay makes clear that the works are less emotionally barren than often supposed. It also shows that our understanding of Old Norse-Icelandic “somatic semiotics” may well depend on the universality of facial expressions and that culture-specific “display rules” or “elicitors” are virtually nonexistent.

The human face has the capacity to generate expressions associated with a wide range of affective states. Despite the fact that there are few words to describe human facial behaviors, the facial muscles allow for more than a thousand different facial appearances. Some examples of feelings that can be expressed are anger, concentration, contempt, excitement, nervousness, and surprise. Regardless of culture or language, the same expressions are associated with the same emotions and vary only in intensity. Using modern psychological analyses as a point of departure, this essay examines descriptions of human facial expressions as well as such bodily “symptoms” as flushing, turning pale, and weeping in Old Norse-Icelandic literature. The aim is to analyze the manner in which facial signs are used as a means of non-verbal communication to convey the impression of an individual's internal state to observers. More specifically, this essay seeks to determine when and why characters in these works are described as expressing particular facial emotions and, especially, the range of emotions expressed. The Sagas and þaettir of Icelanders are in the forefront of the analysis and yield well over one hundred references to human facial expression and color. The examples show that through gaze, smiling, weeping, brows that are raised or knitted, and coloration, the Sagas and þaettir of Icelanders tell of happiness or amusement, pleasant and unpleasant surprise, fear, anger, rage, sadness, interest, concern, and even mixed emotions for which language has no words. The Sagas and þaettir of Icelanders may be reticent in talking about emotions and poor in emotional vocabulary, but this poverty is compensated for by making facial expressions signifiers of emotion. This essay makes clear that the works are less emotionally barren than often supposed. It also shows that our understanding of Old Norse-Icelandic “somatic semiotics” may well depend on the universality of facial expressions and that culture-specific “display rules” or “elicitors” are virtually nonexistent.