Konungs Skuggsjá (c. 1250)

Barnes describes the impact of a small mention of the Letter in the anonymously authored Norwegian chronicle:

A skeptical comment in the mid-thirteenth-century Norwegian Konungs Skuggsjá about the veracity of the Epistola [of Prester John] testifies to widespread knowledge of the work in Scandinavia:

"ein lijtil bok er komit hefur hingat til landz vors. er kallat er at gior væri á Indía landi. Og rædir um india lond. og er suo mællt j bokinni at send hafi verit Emmanuele Grickia keisara. Nu er þat ord flestra manna er heyra ina at þat meigi eigi vera og þat sie ecki nema lygi er þar seigir j þeiri litlu bok.. hefur su hin litla bok verit borinn vijda at hun hefur iafnan verit tortrygd og lygi vænd."

(A little book has come hither to our land, which is said to have been written in the land of India, and which discusses the lands of India; and it is said in the book that it has been sent to Manuel, emperor of the Greeks. Now it is the opinion of most people who hear the book that that cannot be, and that nothing except lies are told in this little book. . . . this particular little book has been widely circulated, but it has always been mistrusted and charged with falsehood)

(pp. 222-223)