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this focus is very much in keeping with growing interest in England
in the early modern period with early history and origins, not least with
the connections and the potential for comparisons with Scandinavian
materials. English scholars were increasingly aware of and interested in
connections with Scandinavia and not least in using Scandinavian materials
and sources in relation to their own.60 there was regular communication
between England and Denmark (even during the English civil war) and
book lists and other evidence suggests that English scholars owned Danish
books, and even a few Scandinavian manuscripts, in the seventeenth centu-
ry.61 It is in this context that we need to envision the compilation of what
is now Beinecke MS 508, a somewhat peculiar, Latin leaning but also a
vernacular manuscript concerned with both the Scandinavian presence in
England and with the events of Scandinavian history as documented in
annals produced in Iceland.
the copying only of the Latin also underlines that vernacular medieval
languages more generally, not just old Icelandic, were difficult for early
modern readers and enthusiasts, as mentioned above. Latin was a more
familiar and accessible language for many scholars than even their own
medieval vernaculars. It was also, of course, more politically useful. Works
published in Latin glorifying a country’s past could be read by a european
audience.
It seems quite possible that an English antiquarian “borrowed” or ac-
quired Arngrims annaler and made a book of North sea history, combining
Anglo-Saxon legal texts with Icelandic annals, both pieces at least partly
accessible to someone who read Latin. It became an international, hybrid
text.
9. Conclusions
the second text in Beinecke MS 508 is the so-called Arngrims annaler men-
tioned by Gustav storm, the manuscript that Arngrímur jónsson sent to
ole Worm before 1641. the manuscript itself makes this claim. Moreover,
we know that there were Latin translations attributed to Arngrímur in the
60 seaton, Literary Relations, 202–74.
61 seaton, Literary Relations, 258–74.
BEInECKE MAnuSCrIPt 508