It has now been 100 years since the publication of the catalogue of the manuscript collection of the National Library began, but the first issue of the catalogue was published in December 1918. In Tíminn on December 28, it is stated: “The manuscript collection has until now been a hidden treasure. No one has fully known what was to be found there. The result [was] obviously that it was largely unused. With the publication of the catalogue, the entire public will have easy access to it and it can be considered certain that, as with the ancient letters, many of the gaps in the history of the country can be filled in and errors corrected. The book is of the best quality. It says what needs to be said and nothing else. When a clear table of contents comes with each volume, I want to make sure that there will be quite a few who want to peer into the treasure. For every Icelander who loves the history of their country and enjoys studying it, this book will be a most welcome guest. It is a key to a new world."

The publication history of the manuscript catalogue can be traced back to 1912, but on 13 November of that year, Jón Jacobson, then National Librarian, wrote a letter to the Cabinet with proposals for changes to the museum's budget in the 1914 and 1915 budgets, in which he mentioned a few things that needed to be addressed. "But most emotionally charged of all is the lack of a scientific catalogue (systematisk Katalog) of the manuscript collection, this gold chest for Icelandic folklore, poetry, etc., which is still a half-hidden treasure for those who wish to use it." (National Library of Iceland 1818 – 1918. Commemorative, p. 240). There were more people considering the need for a good catalogue of the collection, because a month later and a day later Bogi Th. wrote Melsteð article in Ísafold published on January 11, 1913: "The worst of all is that there is no index of the manuscript collection in the National Library, and much of its letter collection is not in any order, let alone more. The Danes and Swedes have had detailed indexes printed of all Icelandic manuscripts in their libraries; the index of Dr. Kr. Kaalund's manuscripts in particular is the purest excellence and the best model for the National Library. Wherever people go, there are indexes of Icelandic manuscripts, except in the National Library. Icelanders should not lag behind other nations in this. An index of the manuscripts in the National Library should be drawn up as soon as possible and published, so that it would be possible to use them and see what is there. While this is not done, it can be said with truth that no nation in the wide world shows Icelandic manuscripts as little respect as Icelanders in Iceland. This is a disgrace." (Ísafold, January 11, 1913, page 10.)

Jón and Bogi's challenge resonated with the authorities, as it was decided that Páll Eggert Ólason would undertake the cataloguing of the National Library's manuscript collection (in parallel with work on cataloging printed books) that same year, and the first issue of the first volume was published before Christmas 1918, as mentioned above, but the aim had been to reach that milestone in the year of the collection's centenary. Páll himself had worked on transcriptions of Icelandic manuscripts that were preserved abroad from 1906 to 1913, and loaned to the National Library for that purpose, and it then became clear to him that it was necessary to make careful catalogs of the manuscripts. The publication marked a turning point. In 1924, Sigurður Nordal wrote: "The year in which the last issue of this catalog is published begins a new era in research into Icelandic education and history in later centuries. Everyone who is interested in Icelandic studies will wish that year to come as soon as possible." (Lögrétta 2 April 1924, p. 3.) The publication of the index was completed in 1937 and spanned three volumes of over 2,000 pages with descriptions of around 8,600 manuscripts.

Páll did a great deal of work with the manuscript catalogues, but he was criticized for being somewhat opinionated in attributing authors to men (Jón Helgason, Handritaspjall, p. 118) and for not making the role of women in the manuscript heritage sufficiently visible (Guðný Hallgrímsdóttir, Sagan af Guðrúnu Ketilsdóttir, p. 15–31.) He himself wrote at the end of the work that the National Library contained “far too many useless manuscripts” but also said that “all catalogues are only a guide.” (Volume III, pp. vii and xi). In any case, it can be pointed out that the catalogue is indispensable for getting to know the manuscript heritage of the National Library, as historian Þorkell Jóhannesson wrote in the preface to his book, Stiftamtmenn og amtmenn á Íslandi 1750–1800 in 1948: “The catalogue of manuscripts is one of the most important works that has been done for Icelandic scholarship and will be fully appreciated later, as anyone who has to search the manuscript collection for information will attest.” (p. 3).

The collection of manuscripts grew every year, so that four supplementary volumes were published in the latter half of the twentieth century. Páll Eggert compiled the first supplementary volume, which was published in 1947 (196 pages), Supplementary Volume II was published in 1959 under the supervision of Lárus H. Blöndal (198 pages) with a list of parchments by Jakob Benediktsson (42 pages), Supplementary Volume III was published in 1970, published by Lárus and Grím M. Helgason (242 pages), and then Supplementary Volume IV in 1996, on the 150th anniversary of the manuscript collection, under the supervision of Grím M. Helgason and Ögmundur Helgason (416 pages).

The files can now be found on bækur.is. On the manuscript collection's website, you can also find files where names of people on the one hand and subject keys on the other have been merged into files, which makes all searches easier. Work is also underway to transfer information from the printed files to handrit.is.

The picture shows the three main volumes that were published between 1918 and 1937 and the first supplementary volume that was published in 1947. Páll Eggert is watching over these works of his in the picture.