Gripla - 20.12.2008, Side 75

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evidence of his qualifications to be there.12 But once his long-term role in
the royal administration was securely confirmed by his appointment as lög-
maðr of the Gulaþing district, his need to accumulate textual qualifications
seems to have subsided. The last major addition to Hauksbók, the viðræður,
is dated to 1311 — the first year that Haukr is referred to as lögmaðr of the
Gulaþing district. Although he would be part of the book-loving milieu
of the officials in Bergen for another ten years, Hauksbók grew no larger.
Presumably it had served its main purpose.
Gunnar Harðarson (1995, 181) asserted that Hauksbók should be con-
sidered a manifestation of the literary culture of the magistrates in the
service of the State, and indeed most of the manuscript was written while
Haukr was a lögmaðr based in Norway, but the manuscript’s roots in
Icelandic ambition and Icelandic literary culture complicate this assess-
ment. Regardless of its specific model, Hauksbók does seem to have
been inspired by a manuscript that was in Iceland, and it is a compila-
tion of texts that are almost entirely in Icelandic and that are the work
of Icelandic writers, adapters, and translators. To this degree, Sverrir
Jakobsson (2005, 2007) was perfectly correct to think that Hauksbók
represents Haukr’s world-view. As was mentioned above, medieval ency-
clopedias were thought of as mirrors of God’s creation, and Hauksbók
reflects the world as Haukr saw it. But Simek’s and Helgi Þorláksson’s
conclusions complicate this assessment as well. If Helgi is to be believed,
Haukr early on decided to make a version of Landnámabók to showcase
his genealogical qualifications for royal appointment, and if Simek is to be
believed, probably before 1302 but certainly shortly after, Haukr decided
to deploy his Landnámabók within an Icelandic version of a large monastic
encyclopedia. If Helgi is to be believed further, Haukr constructed what
was intended to be a material testament to his learning and knowledge,
again in the pursuit of royal office. Hauksbók is thus not a transparent,
disinterested, or objective representation of Haukr’s world-view. Instead,
its form and its contents are the result of deliberate, self-serving selection.
12 It is possible that Haukr’s “marked inclination to shorten” and “the economy which is
revealed in the use of damaged parchment and the increasingly severe compression of
the writing” (Jón Helgason 1960, xviii) are signs of a need to produce a large manuscript
quickly. See Sveinbjörn Rafnsson (1992, 82) for a list of the scholars who have demonstrated
Haukr’s inclination towards abbreviation, and see Sverrir Jakobsson (2007, 29) for other
explanations for this tendency.
PERSPECTIVES ON HAUKSBÓ K