Illuminating the legacy of Grímur Thorkelin
Grímur Thorkelin was an Icelandic-Danish scholar, commissioned by the King of Denmark in the late-18th century to travel through Britain, Ireland and the Isle of Man, to find out more about the history of Scandinavia. “With the extent of Norse influence throughout northern Europe in the Middle Ages, anyone wishing to learn more about the history of the ‘Vikings’ has to engage with sources in other languages,” explains Matthew Driscoll, professor of Old Norse Philology at the University of Copenhagen and Thorkelin project coordinator. “Thorkelin knew of the existence of historical records in the Irish language, ones documenting Norse raids, battles and alliances.” He went in search of Gaelic texts, a quest partly intended to make a name for himself. But it also had a significant impact on Gaelic literature, something often overlooked today. “Previously, Thorkelin had only ever appeared as a footnote in Gaelic studies, but this project has put him front and centre,” remarks Peadar Ó Muircheartaigh, senior lecturer in Celtic Studies at Aberystwyth University and Thorkelin project researcher. “It tells an interesting story about foreign interest in things Irish in the later 18th century.” The EU-funded Thorkelin project focused on the Irish manuscripts Thorkelin returned with to Denmark, and aimed to get a sense of how he obtained them, and more generally to understand how a foreigner in 1780s Dublin could engage with Irish language literature.
Unravelling ancient Irish manuscripts
The researchers catalogued and examined Thorkelin’s collection of Gaelic-language manuscripts, around half a dozen of which are preserved in Copenhagen’s Royal Danish Library, along with other papers and manuscript fragments. The research was undertaken with the support of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme. One manuscript was a book of extracts from annalistic records made by an Irish scribe. “Although the manuscript was made in 1789, it copied much older material,” says Ó Muircheartaigh. “The very first entry is from the end of the eighth century, detailing the sighting of Norse raiders off the Ulster coast.”
Posing questions to Thorkelin’s collection
One question explored through the project was on Thorkelin’s role as a patron of scribes and commissioner of manuscripts. He commissioned the Irish scribe Theophilus O’Flanagan to copy material for him, allowing the researchers to see how the material may have been shaped to appeal to the foreign scholar. “There are some tantalising indications that mentions made of Iceland may have been inserted, or expanded upon, by O’Flanagan in order to stimulate Thorkelin’s interest,” adds Ó Muircheartaigh.
Advancing the state of the art in Gaelic manuscript studies
One relatively big find was that Thorkelin had brought a Welsh language manuscript back with him, catalogued mistakenly as Gaelic. “This was entirely new information to Welsh scholars, who did not know of its existence,” Ó Muircheartaigh adds. The manuscript was a copy made by Thorkelin himself, containing a story about a medieval Welsh king, whose ancestry was Danish. “Thorkelin clearly wanted this story to be part of the Danish national story and so he copied it and brought a copy back to Copenhagen,” he explains. Overall, the project will help with the general understanding of Gaelic manuscripts, found all over the world. “A clearer picture of one collection gives us a clearer picture of the whole,” Driscoll says.
Keywords
Thorkelin, historian, Scandinavia, history, Vikings, search, scribe, Gaelic, manuscript, studies
