Gripla - 20.12.2008, Blaðsíða 70

GRIPLA68
tions. Membrana Reseniana 6 is known to have contained a brief history
of the world in Latin by Isidore of Seville; a continuation tracing the
Byzantine emperors into the twelfth century; lists of popes, patriarchs,
and the abbots of Monte Cassino; two short catalogues of the German
emperors in Icelandic; Icelandic annals; a Latin text dealing with the rules
of geometry; a map of the known world; a short year-by-year sketch of the
life of Bishop Guðmundr Arason of Hólar; a fragment of a memorial poem
about King Magnús VI of Norway; a Latin text dealing with astronomy
and the paths of the heavenly bodies; genealogies of Óðinn’s ancestors
and descendants; lists of the kings of Denmark, Sweden, Norway going
back to Ragnarr loðbrók; a list of the kings of Anglo-Saxon England; a
list of eclipses; a Latin calendar annotated with the names of Icelanders
who died on various days of the year; a Latin text dealing with the rules
of arithmetic; and a selection of short texts dealing with chronological
calculations relating to Church history and religious observance (Stefán
Karlsson 1988, 40–52). The closest similarities are therefore the presence
of a map; texts about arithmetic, astronomy, and the church calendar; and
genealogies involving Ragnarr loðbrók. Broader similarities also exist, such
as the interest in world history and Scandinavian history and the use of
works by Isidore of Seville, but the differences here are striking. Whereas
Membrana Reseniana 6 avoids narrative historiography almost completely,
relying instead on lists, catalogues, and annals, Hauksbók is the reverse.
Its histories are almost entirely narrative, with the lists of the bishops of
Greenland and Oslo forming the sole exceptions. Whereas Membrana
Reseniana 6 looks to Isidore of Seville for world history, Hauksbók looks
to him for geography. And whereas Membrana Reseniana 6 is very much
concerned with the history of the Church, it completely lacks the interest
in theology that is one of Hauksbók’s most prominent features.
The second attempt to solve the puzzle of Hauksbók’s clerical nature
was made by Rudolf Simek. He first suggested that the Liber Floridus may
have served as a general model for Hauksbók (Simek 1990, 377–383), but
the same could be said for almost any other medieval encyclopedia, such as
Hrabanus Maurus’ De rerum naturis (Clunies Ross and Simek 1993, 165).
Over the next two years, Simek strengthened his argument, showing that
material from the Liber floridus appears in several Icelandic manuscripts.
AM 736 III 4to and AM 732b 4to each contain a diagram of the Labyrinth