Gripla - 01.01.2003, Page 11

THE BUCHANAN PSALTER AND ITS ICELANDIC TRANSMISSION
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also travelled to Rostock in October 1592. There he became acquainted with
the famous theologian David Chytraeus (1530-1600), as well as his younger
brother Nathan and his son-in-law, the theologian Johannes Freder (1544-
1604).6 It was the elder Chytraeus who, after reading Amgrímur Jónsson’s
Brevis commentarius de Islandia (Copenhagen, 1593) encouraged him to
write the more detailed description of Iceland and its history found in
Crymogæa (1609).7 The two remained in contact after Arngrímur Jónsson’s
visit, and several letters to him from the elder Chytraeus and from Freder have
survived.
The Buchanan psalter had made its way to the Latin school at Skálholt by
1630 at the latest. The letters of Gísli Oddsson, bishop at Skálholt, include a
book-list dated 6 November 1633.8 The list contains 98 items sent by the
bishop to his brother, Ámi Oddsson lögmaður, who resided in Haukadalur.
Number 96 on the bishop’s list is “Bucchananus in psalmos Davidis.” A
register of books belonging to Gissur Bjamason, who died in 1672 during his
studies in Copenhagen, has also survived. Gissur Bjamason’s belongings were
shipped back to Skálholt following his death and appraised there on 23 July
1674. The Skálholt inventory lists 34 volumes formerly in his collection, of
6 Amgrimi Jonae opera laline conscripta, vol. 4, ed. Jakob Benediktsson, 11 and 13 (see also
Arngrimi Jonae opera laline conscripta, vol. 3, 91-92, 96, 98, 105-106). Amgrímur Jónsson
was at least familiar with another of Nathan Chytraeus’s publications, the 1594 Fastorum
ecclesiæ Christianæ lihri XII (Arngrimi Jonae opera latine conscripta, vol. 4, 468). David
Chytraeus’s Chatechisis (Rostock, 1554) was translated and published by Bishop
Guðbrandur Þorláksson in 1600, in conjunction with the Enchiridon by Martino Chemnitius
(Hörður Ágústsson, “Bækur,” in Skálholt - skrúði og áhöld, eds. Kristján Eldjám and Hörður
Ágústsson, 348).
7 David Chytraeus himself wrote a description of Iceland as part of Saxonia, an ongoing
historicial/topographical project modeled on the writings of his Rostock predecessor Albert
Krantz (1448-1517). An early version of Chytraeus’s description appeared in his Chronicon
Saxoniae (1588); it went through several editions and revisions before it appeared in its final
form as Saxonia in 1599. It has been suggested that Chytraeus’s description relied heavily on
information gathered from his Icelandic acquaintances; see Helge Bei der Wieden, “Die
Darstellung Islands in der “Saxonia” des David Chytraeus,” in David und Nathan Chytraeus:
Humanismus im konfessionellen Zeitalter, eds. Karl-Heinz Glaser, Hanno Lietz, and Stefan
Rhein, 88-90.
8 AM 246 4to, 286 r/v, continued on 299r. The heading reads: “Anno 1633 þann 6. Novembris
hafde Bjóm Hóskulldson med sier þessar Bækur ur Skalholltte sem Lógmanninum tilheirdu.”
Bjöm Höskuldsson was a cousin of the brothers Ámi and Gísli Oddsson and in their service
during the 1630s. See Páll Eggert Olason, Islenzkar æviskrár frá landnámstímum til ársloka
1940 [ÍÆ], vol. 1, 222-223.