This chapter introduces the wide-ranging textual culture which grew up in medieval Iceland and generated the enormous variety of Old Norse-Icelandic written texts. It details the present-day locations of the major collections of Icelandic manuscripts and gives an account of how these manuscripts were preserved and what proportion of them may have been lost. An account of the origins of manuscript production in Iceland and its subsequent history follows, with criteria for dating manuscripts and discussion of different scripts. The effect of the introduction of the printing press is noted. Recent new approaches to manuscript studies, including codicology and greater attention to paper manuscripts and the physical processes of manuscript-making, are also covered. The chapter moves on to address digitization and the standardization of online texts, and concludes with discussion of what the future may hold for manuscript studies, including collaboration between palaeographers and scientists such as geneticists, ecologists and chemists, and the emergence of a new discipline of biocodicology, enabling a holistic examination of the interplay between many different environmental factors.

Homilies and other texts of Christian instruction form an important part of Old Norse-Icelandic literature and give unparalleled insight into the religious worldview of medieval Icelanders and Norwegians. This chapter traces the development of this corpus, beginning with the first Norse encounters with Christian book culture in the conversion period and the earliest examples of book-production in Norway. It surveys evidence for the character, frequency and context of preaching in Iceland and Norway, including descriptions of sermons in such literary texts as Sverris saga. It discusses the most important repositories of sermons and homilies from this period, including the Icelandic Homily Book and Norwegian Homily Book. Finally, it considers Christian instruction and clerical training more broadly in the Old Norse world, looking at vernacular adaptations of theological primers and treatises translated from Latin, such as Elucidarius, Alcuin’s treatise on virtues and vices, and the Dialogues of Gregory the Great, and closing with discussion of the exempla (dœmisögur) associated with Jón Halldórsson, bishop of Skálholt.