Gripla - 20.12.2014, Page 74

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Jakob claims, “was lost in the fire of Copenhagen, 1728.”44 But it survived:
Beinecke MS 508 is the copy once in the possession of ole Worm. It is
the so-called Arngrims annaler, whose existence Storm gestures at but can
provide no bibliographical information for, believing the manuscript to
have been lost.
the most obvious reason to support this argument is that Beinecke
MS 508 itself associates the annals with Arngrímur Jónsson. on an oth-
erwise blank page, bound before the beginning of the text, it is written (in
a hand different from the body of the text): “Annales ex Boreali Islandia
transsmissi per Arngrimum jonam.” [Annals from northern Iceland sent
by Arngrimus jonas].45
this attribution matches the description made by Otto sperling
(1634−1715), who copied extracts from the annals manuscript sent by
Arngrímur when it was a part of the old university library, after it had
been donated by resen but before the 1728 fire. Sperling wrote about the
manuscript from which he copied his extracts: “Huc usque Annales hi
Islandica lingua scribsi qui incipiunt ab anno 636, cui titulus ‘Annales um
thad sierligt sem till heffur fallid i Danmark norige thyskalandi Islande
og annarstadar fran thui Datum skriffadist 636’. sed ego externa quae pau-
ca sunt nec pertinent ad septentrionalia omisi. In frontispicio alia manu
adscribtum legitur ‘Annales ex Boreali Islandia transmissi per Arngrimum
jonam filium Islandum’. exstant in Resenii Bibliotheca, nunc publica
Universitatis Hafniensis in libro qui habet signum R. vI. 3 a p. 377 ad p.
501.”46 [the annals here written in the Icelandic tongue begin from the
year 636 under the title ‘Annals concerning notable events that happened
in Denmark, norway, germany, Iceland and other places beginning from
the year 636’ but I have omitted the few things that do not pertain to the
north. on the frontispiece in a different hand is the attribution: ‘Annals
44 Ole Worm’s Correspondence, 520 (n. 357, superscript 25).
45 new Haven, Beinecke MS 508, fol. 17r.
46 Gks 3638 8vo. fol. 139r. storm makes a small transcription error in his reference to this
passage. He reads an m abbreviation nasal stroke above the a in ‘jona’ as forming a part
of the letter æ, giving a reading of “Annales ex Boreali Islandia transmissi per Arngrimum
jonae filium Islandum,” a reading that makes more grammatical sense given the presence
of filium, which was not a part of how Arngrímur identified himself in his Latin works;
Islandske Annaler, xxxi. According to Jakob Benediktsson, “on the title-pages of his printed
works AJ always styles himself Arngrimus Jonas Islandus”, cf. Arngrimi Jonae Opera
Conscripta, 4:4 (n. 2).