Gripla - 20.12.2013, Blaðsíða 224

GRIPLA224
lost grýlukvæði is highly improbable, but Grýlukvæði in Gissur sveinsson’s
collection is an anonymous poem, and this particular manuscript cannot
be the source of the information that Guðmundur erlendsson was its
author.
Páll Vídalín’s treatise also claims that Guðmundur composed the Rímur
af krosstrénu, a set of very popular sacred rímur based on the legend of the
cross-tree. As Mariane overgaard has pointed out, its author expressly
identifies himself in the text of the rímur itself as “sigurður prestur”, and
extant manuscripts of the Rímur af krosstrénu are virtually unanimous
in attributing the work to sigurður jónsson of Presthólar.30 A plausible
explanation is that Páll Vídalín has confused Rímur af krosstrénu with the
Rímur af barndómi Jesú Krists, Guðmundur erlendsson’s verse adaptation
of Jesu Barndoms Bog (1508), a danish folkebog based on the apocryphal
Protoevangelium of james and Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew.31 the error
is a fairly major one, and an indication that Páll Vídalín may be an unreli-
able authority concerning Guðmundur erlendsson’s poetic output; that
he attributed Grýlukvæði to the parson for sléttuhlíð could simply be an
inference.
even in his own day, Guðmundur erlendsson was not the only poet
acquainted with sléttuhlíð and its immediate vicinity. His friend sveinn
jónsson, a minister at Hólar (1639–1648) and later the parson for Barð in
fljót, composed an elegy on the death of Guðmundur’s wife, Guðrún. In
Hallur Guðmundsson’s Ó þú fallvalta veraldarvist, a poem commemorat-
ing his father,32 he mentions a sigurður Magnússon who passed away
on March 7th, 1669, praising sigurður as his father’s treasured friend
(mætavinur) and his own personal benefactor (velgjörðarmaður). sigurður,
who farmed at tjarnir in sléttuhlíð at the time of his death, was the broth-
er of a farmer-poet, Ásgrímur Magnússon of nearby Höfði in Höfðaströnd
(d. 1679), author of Rímur af Víglundi og Ketilríði and Rímur af Ölkofra.
30 The History of the Cross-Tree down to Christ’s Passion: Icelandic Legend Versions, ed. Mariane
overgaard, editiones Arnamagnæanæ, series B, vol. 26 (Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1968),
cxlvi. Cf. also Þórunn sigurðardóttir, “Hallgrímur með ‘síra Guðmund erlendsson í felli í
bak og fyrir’,” 54.
31 these were by far the most popular rímur composed by Guðmundur erlendsson, and new
copies continued to be produced into the nineteenth century. Indeed, if the number of
extant manuscripts is any indication of popularity, then the Rímur af barndómi Jesú Krists
were the single most popular set of sacred rímur composed in the seventeenth century.
32 Preserved in Lbs 1529 4to.