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famous poets of Iceland and some rather unknown local poets that were
in several cases Gunnlaugur’s neighbours or relatives. to name but two
examples, poems by the Rev. Hallgrímur Pétursson and Guðmundur
kolbeinsson at Marbæli are included. Hallgrímur (1614–74) was the most
outstanding Icelandic poet of his time, if not of all time.45 It is possible
that Gunnlaugur knew some of Hallgrímur’s poems by heart or that he
even owned some printed books containing them. In either case it would
not have been difficult for Gunnlaugur to get hold of an exemplar, but it
means that no information about Gunnlaugur’s scribal network can be
obtained in this instance. It cannot be established whether he made use
of his own memory, printed books or handwritten manuscripts, either in
his own possession or borrowed from somebody else. However, the case
is different with Guðmundur kolbeinsson (1770–1846), a contemporary
of Gunnlaugur’s and a farmer at Marbæli,46 which lies in the vicinity of
Gunnlaugur’s home. Information about Guðmundur is even scarcer than
that about Gunnlaugur, and only a few of Guðmundur’s poems are extant.
It is not clear how Gunnlaugur was able to include a poem by Guðmundur
in one of his manuscripts.47 In general, the manuscripts with metrical
contents thus prove that Gunnlaugur used local, perhaps oral, sources and
popular sources that were easily available in various media.48
45 A team of scholars, based at the stofnun Árna Magnússonar í íslenskum fræðum in
Reykjavík, is currently working on an eight-volume edition of his complete works. By
now four volumes have been published, see Hallgrímur Pétursson, Ljóðmæli, ed. Margrét
eggertsdóttir, svanhildur óskarsdóttir, kristján eiríksson and Þórunn sigurðardóttir, Rit-
safn Hallgríms Péturssonar, vols. 1.1–1.4, stofnun Árna Magnússonar í íslenskum fræðum,
Rit, vols. 48, 57, 64, 75 (Reykjavík: stofnun Árna Magnússonar í íslenskum fræðum,
2000–).
46 see Páll eggert ólason, Íslenzkar æviskrár, 2:168.
47 It seems possible that he wrote it down while or after his neighbour recited it. this im-
plies that Gunnlaugur used oral sources, in this case a first-hand source, which would be
an important reference to Gunnlaugur’s scribal network. It is of course also possible that
somebody, perhaps even Guðmundur himself, wrote the poem down and that Gunnlaugur
copied it from such a written source. A similar case concerns the poems by Bólu-Hjálmar,
a contemporary poet of Gunnlaugur who is mentioned in Gunnlaugur’s diary as a visitor,
see, for example, Lbs 1588 8vo, fol. 451v:18–19 for the days 18–19 june 1852. Poems by
Bólu-Hjálmar are also included in Gunnlaugur’s poetry collections, for example in js 588
4to. this makes it perhaps more likely that Gunnlaugur used first-hand sources.
48 davíð ólafsson came to similar conclusions concerning the scribal community in Akranes.
sighvatur Borgfirðingur used oral and written sources for his numerous poetry manu-
scripts; the oral sources were both the poets themselves and other members of the com-
GunnLAuGuR jónsson fRoM skuGGABjÖRG