Gripla - 20.12.2016, Síða 16

GRIPLA16
possible to interpret Bishop Þórður’s decision to print old norse historical
texts as an attempt to counter the appearance of such titles overseas. If so,
his venture was a failure, as his experiment in Icelandic printing history
was not to be repeated so long as the printing press remained in ecclesi-
astical hands. the next historical text to be printed in Iceland would be
an edition of the seventeenth-century annals (Annálar) of Björn Jónsson
á Skarðsá (1574–1655), which appeared in 1774 from the privately-owned
press that had been set up on Hrappsey in Breiðafjörður the year before
(a work that proved so popular that it was reprinted the same year in a
two-volume enlarged edition with a Latin translation).27 Ironically, the
next non-religious work to appear from the church-run press was to be a
volume of fiction in 1756.28
the same impetus that motivated Þormóður to include fornaldarsögur
in his Historia rerum Norvegicarum is also seen in Nordiska kämpa dater,
the massive folio volume that Erik Julius Björner published in Stockholm
in 1737, containing the stories of ancient Scandinavian heroes, particularly
those with some connection with Sweden, and providing the Icelandic texts
of fourteen fornaldarsögur with Swedish and Danish translations.29 But just
as Geoffrey of Monmouth was dismissed once and for all as a fabulist by
and eighteenth centuries not mentioned here. See also: Vilhelm Gödel, “fornnorsk-isländsk
litteratur i Sverige,” Antiqvarisk Tidskrift för Sverige 16.4 (1898): 1–312.
27 Björn Jónsson á Skarðsá, Annalar, ed. Ólafur olavius (Hrappsey: Guðmundur Ólafsson,
1774); Annalar Bjørns a Skardsa. Sive Annales Biörnonis de Skardsa, 2 vols. (Hrappsey:
Guðmundur Ólafsson, 1774–1775).
28 Þess Svenska Gustav Landkrons Og Þess Engelska Bertholds Fꜳbreitileger Robinsons, Edur Lijfs
Og Æfe Søgur, trans. Þorsteinn Ketilsson (Hólar: Halldór Eiríksson, 1756). this narrative
was first published in German in 1724 under the title: Gustaf Landcron, eines schwedisches
Edelmannes, merckwürdiges Leben und gefährliche Reisen. Auf welchen er als ein wahrhaf-
ter robinson sich mit einer getauften Türckin bey 12. Jahren, in einer unbewohnten Insel
wunderbahr erhalten (frankfurt: C. f. v. M., 1724). Subsequently it was translated into
Danish by Caspar Peter rothe (1724–1784) as: Den saa kaldede Svenske Robinson eller
Gustav Landkrons, en svensk Herremands, forunderlige Livs- og selsomme Levnets-beskrivelse
(Copenhagen: J. C. Groth, 1743).
29 Erik Julius Björner, ed., Nordiska kämpa dater, i en sagaflock samlade om forna kongar och
hjälter … (Stockholm: Joh[an]. L[aurentius]. Horrn, 1737). the scholarly introduction to
the work proved too long for an already outsize volume and was published separately: Erik
Julius Björner, Inledning til de yfwerborna göters gamla häfder, särdeles götiska språkets förmån
och sagornas kjännedom. Introductio in antiquitates hyperboreo gothicas, præfertim prærogativam
linguæ et cognitionem historiarum gothicarum (Stockholm: Joh[an]. Laur[entius]. Horrn, 1738).
Busch, Grossmachtstatus und Sagainterpretation, 136–96, 221–25 analyses the text of each of
the sagas printed by Björner in Nordiska kämpa dater.