Gripla - 2019, Side 234

GRIPLA234
motivated by more than one of the factors described above, but nothing can
be deduced with certainty from his silence on his own election and from
his eulogy of the new bishop. The only fact which could be interpreted as
a reaction to the situation is Arngrímur’s application to the Chancellor,
immediately after the election, for a grant to support his studies. This ap-
plication resulted in a royal order, issued in 1628, that Arngrímur should
enjoy the revenue from seven of the cathedral’s estates to the end of his
life, which as it turned out was considerably less than he had hoped for.
Arngrímur and Halldóra seem to have been on good terms in general; but
if Arngrímur really came under pressure from Guðbrandur’s family in this
situation, it is easy to imagine that he must have been disappointed and
to a certain degree estranged from them. This hypothetical reason could
explain some of Arngrímur’s reluctance when asked to write a eulogy of
Guðbrandur Þorláksson; and if it was not because of this, he had at least
two other weighty reasons for being reluctant, as we shall see next.
2) In Athanasia Arngrímur mentions the ancestry of Þorlákur Skúlason
at least six times. On page 3 Þorlákur is said to be the son of Mr.
Guðbrandur’s daughter, Dn. Gudbrandi ex filia nepos, on page 25 he is
congratulated on having received the torch from his excellent and fa-
mous grandfather, lampada .... ab optimo et celeberrimo avo tuo traditam,
on page 33 he is called a consanguineus “relative” of Halldóra, on page 34
he is described as the hope and solace of his mother’s sister Halldóra,
Materteræ spes et solamen, and on page 35 and 36 he is simply spoken of as
Guðbrandur’s nepos “grandson.” A reader interested in genealogy might
want to know more about the exact descent from Guðbrandur and would
naturally turn to the chapter on the old bishop’s family. There (pp. 20–21)
we read that Halldóra, Guðbrandur’s wife, left him four children when she
died in 1585: a little daughter who died shortly after her mother; a son, Páll,
who married and had at least six children; and two daughters who survived
their father, namely Kristín, who married Ari Magnússon, with whom she
had five children, and the often-mentioned Halldóra, who never married.
Knowing that Þorlákur Skúlason was a son of Guðbrandur's daughter and
a nephew of Halldóra, the reader would draw the logical conclusion that
Þorlákur was the son of Kristín and Ari Magnússon, which he was not.
An Icelandic reader would at once have realized that the name Þorlákur
Skúlason did not conform to the Icelandic custom of patronymics, but a