The Arnamagnaean Manuscript Collection
...has been added to UNESCO‘s Memory of the World Register, thus becoming the first Icelandic relic to be submitted to the archives.
The Arnamagnaean Manuscript Collection has been added to UNESCO‘s Memory of the World Register. Since 1997 UNESCO has aimed at the preservation and dissemination of culturally significant archive holdings and library collections from all over the world. Today the organization has listed 193 items of documentary heritage of exceptional value. Guðrún Nordal, curator of The Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies, says that the addition of the Arnamagnaen manuscripts to the archives certifies the cultural importance of the Icelandic manuscripts on a global scale.
The Icelandic scholar and antiquarian Árni Magnússon (1663-1730) (Arnas Magnæus) spent the greater part of his life building up what is generally considered to be the most important collection of early Scandinavian manuscripts in existence. The Manuscripts offer invaluable source material on the history and culture of medieval, renaissance and early-modern Scandinavia and much of Europe. Foremost among the texts in the collection are the many examples of the ancient Icelandic narrative genre known as the saga, which is generally considered to be one of the highpoints of world literature and is still translated and read throughout the world today.
The Arnamagnaean Manuscript Collection contains about 1600 manuscripts from the archives of Árni Magnússon, over a hundred manuscripts from Det arnamagneanske institut in Copenhagen, and an array of ancient charters accumulated by Árni. The Arnamagnean is the first of Icelandic relics to be submitted to the UNESCO archives.