Gripla - 20.12.2014, Síða 66

GRIPLA66
the text of these annals is similar to a group of annals copied in north
Iceland and called by their editor Gustav storm the Gottskalks Annaler,
after the copyist and author of a continuation of one version in this group,
gottskálk Jónsson (ca. 1524–ca. 1593).5 Beinecke MS 508’s text most
closely resembles the text preserved in AM 412 4to, which probably shared
an exemplar with Gottskálks Annaler up until the year 1394, and is referred
to in storm’s edition as I. the I text and MS 508 are in general the most
similar, sometimes sharing spelling idiosyncrasies such as Ansargij where
Gottskálk’s copy has Ensgarj (referring to Bishop Ansgar of Hamburg-
Bremen).6 Both texts also stop in the same year. Nothing about these simi-
larities suggests that either is a copy of the other,7 but they are certainly
more similar than AM 410 4to or AM 429 a 2 4to, the other manuscripts
that Storm suggests derive from the now lost common exemplar.8
Beinecke MS 508 travelled under scholarly radar for centuries, and
it takes a certain amount of untangling to understand the reasons for its
production and long obscurity. I begin by describing the context for the
exchange and copying of manuscripts in scandinavia in the seventeenth
century, especially in Iceland and Denmark, which were both under the
Danish Crown. this was a time when the Danish king kept several his-
torians on his payrolls and showed a robust interest in Denmark’s ancient
past.9 It was also a time of renewed interest in Icelandic written sources,
5 gottskálk Jónsson was a priest at glaumbær in Skagafjörður. for more information
about gottskálk’s life and his books see, Svanhildur Óskarsdóttir, “gagn og gaman séra
Gottskálks jónssonar í Glaumbæ,” in Greppaminni: Rit til heiðurs Vésteini Ólasyni sjötugum
(reykjavík: Hið íslenska bókmenntafélag, 2009), 377–91. gottskálk’s son wrote the final
entries for the years between 1568 and 1578; Jakob Benediktsson’s introduction to Arngrimi
Jonae Opera Latine Conscripta, ed. jakob Benediktsson, 4 vols., Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana,
vols. 9–12 (Copenhagen: Einar Munksgaard, 1950–57), 4:46. gottskálk’s copy of the ann-
als is now preserved at the Swedish royal Library in Stockholm, Kungliga biblioteket,
Perg. 5 8vo. In this article I will refer to this text as Gottskálks Annaler.
6 new Haven, Beinecke MS 508 fol., 22r; Islandske Annaler indtil 1578, ed. Gustav storm,
Det norske historiske Kildeskriftfonds Skrifter, vol. 21 (Christiania: grøndahl og Søns
Bogtrykkeri, 1888), 312.
7 Some spelling, for instance, is the same in MS 508 and in Gottskálks Annals but not in I.
8 this is reassuring given that these two manuscripts are compilations of annals, not strictly
speaking copies, although both were produced in the north of Iceland at the diocese of
Hólar. see storm’s introduction to Islandske Annaler, xxvi–xxvii, xxxii, li–lii.
9 karen skovgaard-Petersen, Historiography at the Court of Christian IV (1588–1648):
Studies in the Latin Histories of Denmark by Johannes Pontanus and Johannes Meursius,
renæssancestudier, vol. 11 (Copenhagen: Museum tusculanum Press, 2002), 23–35;