Gripla - 01.01.1984, Síða 292

288
GRIPLA
drífumál. In the first edition of his Danica literatura (1636), Worm included no
material from Sigurdrífumál, but in the second edition of the same work (1651)
there appears Brynhildarljóð from Völsunga saga. This could have been taken
from a manuscript of a glossary by Magnús Ólafsson in Laufás, Specimen Lexici
Runici, which Worm published in 1650, and this part of Brynhiidarljóð had also
been printed in Stephanius’s commentary to Saxo, Notie uberiores (1645), drawing
on Magnús’s glossary manuscript. In all these printed editions, the text of Bryn-
hildarljóð is from Völsunga saga. It is known that Magnús Ólafsson in Laufás and
Arngrímur Jónsson lærði knew each other, and is therefore probable that both
used the same old parchment manuscript, Nks. 1824 b, 4to. Worm sent Bishop
Brynjólfur Sveinsson a copy of Danica literatura in 1651, and Brynjólfur commen-
ted that the text of Sigurdrífumál needed to be corrected according to the Edda,
which Worm had access to, but used only occasionally. In this, Brynjólfur was a
more perceptive textual critic than Worm.
III
In section II above, some conjectures were made about the history of the manu-
script Nks. 1824 b, 4to. The present section examines what is known about it and
its influence. Bishop Brynjólfur received the manuscript in 1641, and wrote his
initials on it. In 1656 he sent it to Frederick III. Unfortunately, Brynjólfur’s letters
from before 1652, which probably contained important information about his
manuscript collection, have not survived. In the winter of 1641-42, Brynjólfur’s
cousin Torfi Jónsson worked on a translation of Völsunga saga into Latin, but did
not finish it, either because he left for Copenhagen in the autumn of 1642 or be-
cause Brynjólfur’s interest in the project waned after he received the manuscript
of the Edda, which he valued more highly than Völsutiga saga. In Notœ uberiores,
the commentary on Saxo by Stephanius mentioned above, Brynhildarljóð is taken
from the glossary manuscript by Magnús Ólafsson, but Notœ uberiores also draws
on letters from Brynjólfur and his commentary on Saxo, which is otherwise almost
totally lost.
In 1642 Björn Jónsson of Skarðsá wrote a commentary on Brynhildarljóð, a
copy of which is in Papp. fol. 38 in Stockholm. This manuscript was written in
1692 by Ásgeir Jónsson, following an exemplar written for Þormóður Torfason in
1662 by Jón Erlendsson of Villingaholt. This work by Björn exists in more than
one version, and in all there are some 35 manuscripts of it, of varying length. A
summary of the subject matter is given by Páll Eggert Ólason in Menn og menntir.
It is not known for whom Björn wrote the work, but the possibility that it was for
Bishop Brynjólfur would accord with what is known of his activities at this time.
Both in this commentary on Brynhildarljóð from 1642 and in his commentary on
law codes from 1626, Björn made reference to Hávamál. There is evidence for the
existence of a parchment copy of Hávamál in the 17th century. Sophus Bugge and
Guðbrandur Vigfússon sought to attribute another commentary on Brynhildarljóð
to Björn of Skarðsá. This work, Að fornu, is also preserved in Papp. fol. 38 with
the commentary mentioned above. It is much shorter, and only 4 manuscripts of