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into minoris notæ ‘lesser known’ and majoris notæ ‘better known’. Although
Gunnlaugur adopts a different style of the overall structure of the diary
and daily entries, it seems likely that he used this classification of people
into better and lesser known (or officials and non-officials) for his own
lists of the deceased. furthermore, Gunnlaugur started writing down
more personal entries in 1811, including visits to Viðvík, where jón lived
between 1806 and 1822.74 jón himself never mentions Gunnlaugur in his
diary, and entries about the weather, which constitute the main content
of both Gunnlaugur’s and jón’s diaries, are different. Gunnlaugur did,
however, state that he used jón’s Árbækur as a source for his Aldarfarsbók,
as mentioned above. In general, it seems that Gunnlaugur did not have a
direct model for his diary, but drew on the general idea of keeping almancs
and diaries.
one of Gunnlaugur’s first personal entries in the diary gives inform-
ation about possible influences on his scribal activity. on 29 september
1801 he wrote “gékk eg [i] skýdadalnum. fór so framm [i] Hofstada sel
umm kvöldid hvar eg átti heima” [I went [to] skíðadalur, then out to
Hofstaðasel where I lived].75 At this time Halldór konrektor ‘vice rector’
Hjálmarsson (1749–1805), a close friend of jón espólín,76 lived there.
After he graduated from the Latin school in Hólar, he became the scribe
of ólafur stefánsson, stiftamtmaður ‘governor’ and father of Magnús
stephensen. Later Halldór became the rector of the Latin school and
was, according to biographical information compiled in Íslenzkar æviskrár,
industrious in preserving the see’s library.77 At least 30 manuscripts in his
hand, and nearly the same number of manuscripts partly written by him,
are extant today. they are mostly in Icelandic, but also in Latin, danish
and German, and cover a broad range of literature and learned works:
linguistic, literary and also historical material of some sort, for example
genealogies, lists of pupils and biographies of clergymen. When looking
at the manuscripts in Halldór’s hand, it becomes clear that he had strong
74 see Páll sigurðsson, “nokkur orð um jón sýslumann espólín, rit hans og embættisstörf,”
Úlfljótur 25 (1973): 45.
75 Lbs 1588 8vo, fol. 7r:22–25. Gunnlaugur’s use of the past tense “átti” enforces the impres-
sion that he had not written the entry immediately, but at some later point when he had
already moved away from Hofstaðasel.
76 see Þorkell jóhannesson, Tímabilið 1770–1830, 498–99.
77 see Páll eggert ólason, Íslenzkar æviskrár, 2:256–57.
GunnLAuGuR jónsson fRoM skuGGABjÖRG