Gripla - 01.01.2001, Page 126

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GRIPLA
SUMMARY
This article discusses the accuracy of Ami Magnússon’s work and how it shows itself
in the instructions he gave to his scribes and in the judgments he made conceming his
contemporaries. Printed here for the first time is a slip of Ami’s, found in JS 480 4to,
which contains instructions for one of his scribes, Eyjólfur Bjömsson, on how to copy
a manuscript, for example by distinguishing between the two kinds of “s”, between
regular “r” and “r rotunda” and so forth. Other slips on the same subject are printed, all
of which shed light on his working methods and his concem for accuracy.
Ámi began as a young man to copy manuscripts letter-for-letter, but he seems not
to have encouraged his scribes to follow the same method until after 1700, when Eyj-
ólfur Bjömsson and others were engaged to copy manuscripts and diplomas letter-for-
letter. It is probable that Ámi had manuscripts and diplomas which he had no prospects
of owning copied in this way first and foremost. Earlier he had engaged Ásgeir Jóns-
son to copy manuscripts carefully, even though these copies could not be called letter-
for-letter. It also happened that he let his scribes have earlier copies of the same manu-
script, for comparison and to make their task easier (see slips in JS 480 4to and AM
399 4to).
A recent biography of Ámi Magnússon neglects to discuss the influences which
may have affected Ámi and formed his working habits. His passion for accuracy can-
not of course be attributed to any one person; his own natural endowments played the
biggest role, and yet his working habits and his attitude doubtless owe something to the
intellectual currents of the last half of the seventeenth century. Ámi must have become
acquainted with these when he was in the service of Thomas Bartholin in Copenhagen,
and also during his travels in northem Germany. To shed light on this there is some
discussion of the dispute between Papenbroeck and Mabillion over the forging of
diplomas and other matters which had a revolutionary effect on humanistic studies in
the late seventeenth century and on Ámi’s view of himself as primarily a historian,
who collected manuscripts largely for historical purposes.
Guðvarður Már Gunnlaugsson
Stofnun Arna Magnússonar
Arnagarði við Suðurgötu
101 Reykjavík
vardi@am.hi.is