Gripla - 2019, Blaðsíða 12

GRIPLA12
saga is from 1910, while the prolific Magnús Jónsson of Tjaldanes’s last
manuscript was written in 1916.13 The present article combines a biograph-
ical and a community-based approach to the study of Albert Jóhannesson
scribal output in North America, examining Albert’s manuscripts both in
the context of his own life and his status as a member of the Hecla Island
community. Due to the large volume of material contained in Albert’s
manuscripts, the article concentrates mainly on saga prose. In investigating
Albert’s scribal methods, shorter texts with no known history of scribal
publication are also helpful.
In quoting manuscript sources, Albert’s orthography and punctuation
have been standardized to modern Icelandic. For the sake of consistency,
modern Icelandic spellings are also used when referring to medieval lit-
erature.
A life in fragments
Of the several thousand pages that survive in Albert Jóhannesson’s distinc-
tive handwriting, only two leaves torn from a lined notebook document his
own life and experiences. A short biography by pioneer historian Þorleifur
Jóakimsson Jackson includes the only known photograph of Albert.14
Nelson Gerrard, who has extensively studied the Hecla Island settlement,
was the first to research Albert’s homestead on Hecla Island and to recog-
nize his interest in literature.15 By the time Gerrard began his research on
the Hecla Island settlement, however, the community itself had ceased to
exist: most former islanders settled elsewhere after the island was declared
a provincial park in 1975.16 Gerrard was nevertheless able to interview indi-
viduals who had grown up on Hecla Island and could still remember island
life in the early twentieth century.
13 Driscoll, “Pleasure and pastime,” 276.
14 Thorleifur Jackson, Frá austri til vesturs: Framhald af landnámssögu Nýja-Íslands (Winnipeg:
Columbia Press, 1921), 120.
15 Nelson Gerrard, Hecla Island Pioneers and Placenames (Eyrarbakki, MB: n.p., 1991), 20–
21.
16 On the Hecla Island settlement and its demise, see Ingibjörg Sigurgeirsson McKillop,
Mikley: The Magnificent Island: Treasure of Memories: Hecla Island 1876–1976, ([Winnipeg]:
n.p., 1979).