Gripla - 01.01.2003, Side 22

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GRIPLA
stipulates that Buchanan’s Princeps stelliferís should be sung (in Latin), or the
Icelandic hymn Heimili vort og húsin með, the latter presumably if the groom
had not received a Latin-school education.
Eggert Ólafsson’s own texts to Olthofs music appear later in the
ceremony. “Hér er inn borin hjónaskál” (to the music of Incolæ terrarum) was
intended to be sung following dinner on the first day, as a musical toast to the
bride and groom.40 “Vær gefum góða nótt” (to Rerum certa salus) was to be
sung by the youngest of the bridesmaids, with instrumental accompaniment,
as the newlyweds retired at the conclusion of their wedding day.41 Finally,
during the dinner toasts of the second day, “Að bóndaminni biðjum vér” was
sung in the groom’s honor, in “two or four parts” [“með tví- eður fersöng”],
again to Incolae terrarum.42 He also allows for this to be followed by another
one of his poems to the same music, “Fullsæla manns í þessu lífi.”43
If Eggert Ólafsson’s detailed instructions were ever observed, it can only
have been within the means of an educated and well-to-do elite.44 Poetry
fashioned to Olthof s music for less joyful occasions also seems to have been
primarily written for, and sung by, the upper crust of society. At least ten
poetic eulogies survive to music from the Buchanan/Olthof psalter, of which
the oldest is composed in memory of Rev. Jón Halldórsson (1665-1736), who
studied at Skálholt and in Copenhagen (he earned the rare distinction of
graduating “haud illaudabilis”), and was priest at Hítardalur from 1692 until
his death.45 Four eulogies to Olthof s music appear in Lbs 52 fol, a collection
description of Eggert Ólafsson’s own wedding (to Ingibjörg Guðmundsdóttir in 1767)
mentions singers, but no instruments (Ibid., 137-141).
40 Uppkasl tilforsagna um brúðkaupssiðu, 79.
41 Ibid., 85.
42 Uppkast til forsagna um brúðkaupssiðu, 111. Eggert Ólafsson makes two other references to
an ad libitum “chorus of singers in two or four parts” [“söngvarakór með tví- eður
fjórskiftum söng (ef vill)”]. One of these is for his own text to the hymn tune Himneski Guð
vorherra (Ibid., 82-83; the melody is no. 158 in Rask 98 and is printed in IÞ, 287); the other
is his hymn of departure at the conclusion of the festivities, to Hjarta, þankar, hugur, sinni
(Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben, see Uppkast tUforsagna um brúðkaupssiðu, 133).
43 In an interesting overlap between Eggert Ólafsson’s volume and the sixteenth-century
repertory of humanist metrical ode settings, this poem is a gloss on an epigram of Martial
(Book 10, no. 47). The original epigram (Vitam quae faciunt) employs a different poetic
meter. but was itself a favorite poem of Renaissance ode composers.
44 Uppkast til forsagna um brúðkaupssiðu, xi.
45 Adv 21.7.17, 79r: “Helgar mollder þess vel æruverðuga og hálærða manns prófastsins í
Þverárþinge og söknar-herra ad Hytardal ... Sal. Hr. Jóns Halldórssonar, Beatae Memorie,”
to the music of Rerum certa salus. See also IÆ vol. 3, 142-143.