Adam of Bremen

First collected edition folio of six works bound together featuring Adam of Bremen's chronicle of peoples from the Old North and the earliest-known mention of the Vikings' discovery of North America.

• Adam of Bremen (German)
• Scriptores Rerum Germanicum Septentrionalium; Origines Hamburgenses; Inscriptiones Antiquisimae & Celeberrimae Urbis Patriae Hamburgensis; Bibliotheca Germanica; Vindiciae Nominis Germanici; Tabulae, quibus Doctores et Scriptores Ecclesiastici.
• Hamburg: Christiani Liebezeit et al, 1706, 1679, 1694, 1676.
• Half title listing first three titles, three title pages printed in red and black, two engraved frontispieces, engraved device to Bibliotheca title page, woodcut devices to Vindiciae and Tabulae title pages, woodcut headpieces and tailpieces throughout.
• Seven engraved plates and folding map of Hamburg in Origines.
• Bound in full contemporary vellum, manuscript titles in ink on spine, all edges stained red.

Around 1075CE, cleric Adam of Bremen composed a history of the church at Hamburg, which claimed stewardship over all Christian churches in Scandinavia. It provides an extensive account of the lives of people from the Old North in the Viking Age: because he was thinking about the potential conversion of the Vikings, his writing focuses especially on their cultural and religious customs. It has an important description of the temple at Uppsala, which was dedicated to the Norse gods and especially to Thor, and is particularly famous for containing the earliest recorded mention of Vinland — that is, the Viking discovery of North America. This work was first titled Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum; in 1706 this edition of Adam of Bremen was edited under the new title Scriptores Rerum Germanicum Septentrionalium and collected with two more antiquarian works on Hamburg by J.A. Fabricius, including Peter Lambeck's illustrated Origines Hamburgensis, which is a history of Hamburg from 808 to 1292. This particular copy has three additional titles bound in of German antiquarian interest, including the scarce first general bibliography of Germany. Text in Latin.