Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1943, Page 85

5i
in the habit of ascending Helgafell when he was about to make an
important decision.
— 5217-20. Not until more than ioo years later (1750) did Eg-
gert Olafsson and Bjami Pålsson defy the superstition here voiced,
being the first to ascend Hekla1.
— ^227-3o "phg allusion here is probably to the eruption men-
tioned in the so-called “Nyi annåll” under the year 1422 (Annålar
1400-1800 I, 23). The manuscript for this annal was in the library
of Skålholt in the time of Bishop Brynjolfur (see l.c., pp. 1-2).
— 3230. See Strabo I 48; Seneca, Nat. Quaest. II 26, VI 21
(about the island Hiera which had risen from the sea).
— 33* ff. The quotation from Photius shows that Bishop Bryn-
jålfur possessed the edition of 1601. When I went to look up the
quotation in the copy at the University Library of Copenhagen it
tumed out that this very copy had belonged to Bishop Brynjolfur.
The title page has his signature twice, the monogram LL (= lupus
loricatus, his latinisation of the name Brynjolfur), as well as the
date 1638. Moreover, the bishop has entered various marginal notes
in divers parts of the text, mostly indications of the contents in Latin;
on p. 532, however, we find the Icelandic word svefngalldur. Bishop
Brynjolfur left his foreign books to the son of Johan Klein, a Danish
bailiff. What has become of them since is not known; the copy of
Photius was bought for the University Library in 1732.
— 3325’27- See above, the note to p. I515'21.
§ 11. RS dismisses the ghost stories in connection with Helga-
fell as simply lies of monks, while HR is more cautious in its expres-
sions and makes reference to a projected treatment of the subject in
another work.
P. 7529-30. This assertion seems rather bold when we consider
the overwhelming belief in ghosts of that time.
— 34.2"5. Bishop Brynjolfur mentions his plans for a work “De
prisco septentrionis dogmate” in somewhat more detail in a letter
to Worm the next year (Wormii Epp. II 1039-40 ; cf. above p. XXI).
As late as 1662 he alludes to these plans in a letter to Marcus Mei-
bom, the Royal Librarian, in the following words: “qvædam non
1 See Eggert Olafsen’s and Biarne Povelsen’s Reise igiennem Island II,
1772, pp. 862-68.
6*