Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1957, Blaðsíða 38

18
INTRODUCTION
in 1602. AJ did not succeed, for the moment at least, in getting
Crymogæa published in Copenhagen. The manuscript seems
though to have been left there by him, for three years later it
was sent from there to Ph. Nicolai in Hamburg (see III no18
and note). Finally, AJ also procured the order to the Governor,
mentioned above. We know nothing further of his stay in Copen-
hagen, and it is certain that he sailed for Iceland in the spring
of 1603.
From Ph. Nicolai’s words, III m26-8, we see that AJ was
seriously ill in 1604, and in 1606 he still does not seem to have
regained complete health (see III 1126). For the rest, we know
nothing of the nature of this illness, beyond the faet that he must
have shaken off its after-effeets. By this time, at the latest, AJ
had moved to SkagafjorSur, where he was to live until 1630. His
move may have had something to do with the illness, but we have
no further details. In the MelstaSur papers in the PjåSskjalasafn
there is an original letter from Bishop GuSbrandur to the Rev.
Olafur Jånsson (1570-1618), dated 14/3 1604, in which the
Bishop requires him to protect the interests of the parish in a
dispute over a piece of land, even though he has not yet been
formally presented to the living. From this it appears that, at
least at this period, Olafur Jonsson must have been acting as AJ’s
deputy at MelstaSur1, which tallies with the faet that he was
officially appointed to the parish in 1611 (Bréfab. Gbr.P. 590).
He held the living until 1630, when AJ returned there once
more. Evidence of the date of AJ’s move to SkagafjorSur is also
found in his own statement, in an attestation 11/4 1630, to the
effeet that he had lived in SkagafjorSur for 26 years after mov-
ing from the west (AM 248 4to fol. 82r-83r). We know that
AJ was later parson of Mælifell and also of Miklabær, both in
SkagafjorSur, but it is not known when he officially took over
these parishes. It must however have been from 1611, at the
latest, when Olafur Jånsson succeeded him at MelstaSur. In a
letter from Lawman J6n SigurSsson to Bishop GuSbrandur, 27/4
1608 (Aljiingisb. Isl. IV 98), the former speaks of holding a
1 It has however also been suggested that diafur Jonsson was rector at H61ar,
1604-11; see Jon Halldérsson, Skolameistarasogur, 188. If this is correct, AJ must
have had another curate at MelstaSur.