ABSTRACT
William Morris, in common with all the Pre-Raphaelites, prized medieval art and literature: the frescoes of Giotto as well as anonymous miniatures in manuscripts; the literary works of Chaucer, Dante and Malory. More unusually for a Pre-Raphaelite, Morris read medieval Icelandic sagas in the available translations, as did many another Victorian enthusiast, as Andrew Wawn has shown in The Vikings and the Victorians. Morris’s first calligraphic manuscript was for Eyrbyggja saga; he provided his own decorated initial letters and marginal decorations. The William Morris Archive reproduces Huntington MS HM 6463 of The Story of King Magnus, Son of Erling, which manuscript James Barribeau examined in the manner of Swannell, if more sympathetically. Nonetheless, the saga translations of Morris and Magnússon are still in print as well as online and thus are still being read, no doubt by Viking re-enactors as well as by ordinary contemporary folk.
