Íslenzk tunga - 01.01.1964, Page 41

THE SOURCES OF SPECIMEN LEXICI RUNICI
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lated into tlie University on 12tli June, 1650. He then undertook
various literary activities, some of them probably at the request of
Worm, among which were commentaries to Völuspá and parts of
Hávamál, which were used by Resen in his edition of Snorra Edda
of 1665 (which also included these poems). He also commenced
work on his own dictionary of Icelandic, which was edited and pub-
lished by Resen after his death in 1683. He died, like Worm, in the
plague of 1654.
Guðmundur’s book was a more convenient book for students of
Icelandic than SLR,12 and was for a long time the only such work
available (viz. until the publication of Björn Halldórsson’s dictionary
in 1814).
The Correspondences between Lexicon Islandicum and SLR.
Several of the enlries in SLR which are lacking in DG 55 are also
found in Lexicon Islandicum (=LI), and some of them appear in
the later work in a form which precludes the possibility of Guðmund-
ur having taken them from SLR. In some cases the quotations are
fuller in LI, and in some there is more information given as to the
source than in SLR. If it were not that SLR was written and publis-
hed before LI, it would appear that the compiler of the former had
borrowed material from the latter. As it is, it seems certain that Guð-
mundur must have inserted these entries into SLR, and subsequently
used some of the same material for his own dictionary.13
12 Worm himself was aware of the specialist nature of SI.R which makes it
unsuitahle as a heginners’ dictionary. He says, in a letter to Sveinn Jónsson of
June 8th, 1647 (Ole IVorm’s Correspondence, 256);
Eximium Glossarium M. S. mecum communicavit Dominus Magnus
Olaus, in qvo obscuriores voces, qvœ in historiis et priscis cantilenis in-
veniuntur, docte explicavit, ac avthoritatihus ex Edda, Knitlingsagu
aliisqve confirmavit, dignissimum certe qvod lucem videat. Qvia vero
meœ fidei commisit, operam dabo, si faventes hahuero typographos, aliq-
vando in lucem ut prodeat. Nihil hahet affinitatis cum Nomenclatore
Iunii, nihil cum aliis, cum rariora saltem tangat et illa qvæ peculiarem
qvendam ritum et antiqvitatem sapiant.
]s In quoting from LI, which contains an abtindance of printer’s errors, and