Gripla - 20.12.2010, Síða 54

GRIPLA54
Although a less ambitious composition – the first three lines are common-
place incipits known from elsewhere while the rest seems to be an original
composition – these verses, together with the following prologue, show
such striking similarity to the beginning of the B-redaction of Þorláks saga
in AM 382 4to, that it seems justifiable to suggest a definitive identifica-
tion of the B-redactor as Bergr Sokkason. A further stylistic comparison of
the sagas attributed to Bergr and the prologue and additions of AM 382 4to,
as well as of the so called Jarteinabók II, could possibly give support to this
identification but such a project would be well beyond the scope of the
present paper. AM 382 4to was likely written at the Benedictine monastery
of Munkaþverá in the north of Iceland around the middle of the fourteenth
century, and may have been intended from the start for the Bene dictine
nunnery at Reynistaður, founded in 1295, to where, in any case, it found its
way before 1525. There it probably remained until the seventeenth century,
when it came into the possession of Þorlákur Skúlason of Hólar and was
handed down to his son Þórður Þorláksson of Skálholt. Þórður Þorláksson
kept the manuscript in his personal belongings and it was then brought to
Hlíðarendi as part of his and his wife Guðríður Gísladóttir’s property,
where Árni Magnússon received it from the bishop’s widow in 1702.122 In
a way we can say that the story of the Latin praise poem and AM 382 4to
ends where Þorláks saga helga started, at Hlíðarendi where St Þorlákr was
born.123
122 Árni Magnússon states in several notes that he received the manuscript from Guðríður
Gísladóttir in 1702 and that the manuscript was part of the personal belongings of the
bishop’s family and did not belong to the property of Skálholt. See Fahn, “Revealing the
Secrets,” 3–5. AM 382 4to was housed at the Arnamagnæan Collection in Copenhagen
until it was returned to Iceland on May 15, 1984. It is currently at the Árni Magnússon
Institute for Icelandic Studies in Reykjavík.
123 The authors of this article have benefited from conversations and email exchanges with
a number of scholars while researching and writing this paper; they wish to thank
in particular Alex Speed Kjeldsen, Annette Lassen, Jonna Louis-Jensen, Marteinn H.
Sigurðsson, Martin Chase, Philip Roughton, Christopher Sanders, Sigurður Pétursson
and Sverrir Tómasson for their help at various stages of the work – hoping that all the
others who have been involved in one way or another will not take the omission of their
names as a sign of the authors’ ingratitude.