Gripla - 20.12.2016, Síða 7

7
Gripla XXVII (2016): 7–50
SHAUN F. D. HUGHES
HALLDóR JAKOBSSON
ON TRUTH AND FICTION IN THE SAGAS
(1789)1
1. Introduction
ms icel. 32 in the Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge,
Massachusetts, is a paper manuscript completed in 1789 in the hand of
Halldór Jakobsson (17342–1810), at that time sýslumaður in Strandasýsla.3
1 I would like to thank Dr Werner Schäfke and his students from the Skandinavischen
Seminar at the albert-Ludwigs-universität, freiburg im Breisgau, for bringing to my
attention the many mistakes in an earlier transcription of Halldór’s “formáli.” thanks
also to Dr William Stoneman, Curator of Early Books and Manuscripts at the Houghton
Library, Harvard university, Cambridge Ma, for authorizing the production of new
colour photographs of the “formáli” to MS Icel. 32 upon which the transcription in this
article is based. thanks are also due to the two anonymous readers for Gripla who went
through text, transcription and translation with a fine tooth comb. I benefited greatly from
their attentive readings and I trust that they will be pleased with the resulting version. all
remaining errors are of course my own responsibility.
2 Halldór lists the date of his birth as 1734 in the fragment of his autobiography in Lbs 519
4to. only three chapters of this work covering his childhood, his education until 1757 and
his appointment as sýslumaður in Strandasýsla were completed. See Sjöfn Kristjánsdóttir,
“af Halldóri Jakobsyni”, in Grímsævintýri sögð Grími M. Helgasyni sextugum 2. September
1987, ed. Sigurgeir Steingrímsson, 2 vols. (reykjavík: [Menningar- og Minningarsjóður
Mette Magnussen], 1987), 2: 32–38 at pp. 33–37. However, his birthdate is given as 1735 in
Páll Eggert ólason and Jón Guðnason, eds., Islenzkar æviskrár frá landnámstímum til arsloka
1940 [1965], 6 vols. (reykjavík: Hið íslenzka bókmenntafélag, 1948–1976), 2: 257.
3 the MS is 321 leaves, 19.9 x 15.6 cm (“quarto”). Blank: 1v, 4v, 5v, 253v. Several worn-out
pages have been replaced by text in another hand. the sagas contained in the manuscript
are the riddarasaga Sigurðar saga þögla, the fornaldarsögur Völsunga saga (along with Ragnars
saga loðbrókar and the Þáttur af Ragnars sonum), Áns saga bogsveigis, Þiðreks saga af Bern, Egils
saga einhenda og Ásmundar berserkjabana, Þjalar-Jóns saga Svipdagssonar and the modern
fairy-story, Söguþáttur af Rósanía. for a detailed description of the contents and how the
manuscript came to be in the possession of Konrad Maurer (1823–1902), Professor of Law
at the university of Munich, see Shaun f. D. Hughes, “The Fortunes of a Fornaldarsaga
Manuscript,” in The Legendary Legacy: Transmission and Reception of the Fornaldarsögur
Norðurlanda, ed. Matthew Driscoll (Copenhagen: Museum tusculanum Press, forth-
coming 2017).