Icelandic Legend of Saint Dorothy

The volume presents an edition of the Icelandic translation of the legend of Saint Dorothy, extant in a single manuscript, Copenhagen, Arnamagnaean Institute AM 429 12mo, written in the Benedictine con­vent at Kirkjubær in Síða around 1500.

The introduction examines the origin and development of the legend of Saint Dorothy as well as vernacular translations and adapta­tions of the legend and its reception by modern authors and artists. Par­ticular attention is given to Scandinavian and Icelandic adaptations of the legend and evidence of the cult of Saint Dorothy in the North. The analysis of the German, English, and Scandinavian renderings of the legend as well as the Icelandic translation reveals that Jacobus de Voragine’s Legenda aurea version, which has been posited as the source for virtually all o f these, including the Icelandic translation, is not the direct source, for certain deviations from the Legenda aurea version in the Icelandic translation are found also in some of the German and English texts. Some of these deviations appear in a Latin version of the legend represented by a manuscript in the University Library in Bologna, Codex 2800, from the mid-fifteenth century, the text of which is edited in an appendix to the study.