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original fourth stanza provided a fitting ending to the hymn, its text is here
given in full:
Omnes clericuli,
Pariter pueri
Cantent ut angeli:
Advenisti mundo,
laudes tibi fundo,
Ideo gloria
in excelsis Deo.13
[Let all clerics and boys sing like the angels: You have come into the world,
I shower you with praises. Wherefore glory [be] to god in the highest.]
this three-stanza Icelandic version was subsequently amplified by
Hallgrímur Pétursson, who added thirteen new stanzas (or in some manu-
scripts only twelve).14
It is to Bjarni Gissurarson’s translation of the first three stanzas that
we now turn. According to Margrét Eggertsdóttir, “poets [in seventeenth-
century Iceland] were generally educated men, the most accomplished of
whom often composed their verses in Latin”.15 While it is difficult to gauge
the extent of Bjarni’s knowledge of Latin, the following analysis will show
that he must have understood his Latin exemplar sufficiently to produce
a fairly accurate translation.16 His Icelandic translation of the hymn is pre-
served in the manuscripts js 386 8vo and Lbs 238 b 8vo.
In the first stanza, the Icelandic text adds the expression “lijkama vorum
klæddur” [clothed in our flesh].17 this important detail, which stresses that
God has become man, is further reinforced in the second stanza through
the use of the nouns “gud og mann” [god and man] in apposition. By con-
13 Cited from Dreves, Analecta Hymnica, 45:135 (no. 167). translation by ulrike Mic hal-
czik.
14 see section 3.
15 Margrét Eggertsdóttir, Icelandic Baroque. Poetic Art and Erudition in the Works of
Hallgrímur Pétursson, trans. Andrew Wawn (Ithaca: Cornell university Library, 2014),
205.
16 Admittedly, it remains difficult to exclude entirely the possibility that his exemplar was in
a language other than Latin. A Danish or german exemplar is also a possibility.
17 the Icelandic examples are taken from the autograph thott 473 4to, verses 2 and 3 are
reversed in order to correspond with the Latin version.
An ICELAnDIC CHrIStMAS HYMn