Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1957, Page 57
CHAPTER II
37
first book of Crymogæa he gave, it is true, a survey of the dis-
covery of Iceland, the language and origin of the nation, the
institutions of the Commonwealth and so forth. But he explicitly
dismisses the idea of writing a topographical and physical de-
scription of the country (II 20), and he at no time attempted
such a task; as was said before, his information on these topics
is sporadic and unsystematic. This was undoubtedly a contribu-
tory cause to the long life, longer than AJ had hoped, of those
authors against whom he contended. Later editors and writers
plainly found the fables and fairy-tales of Blefken and his school
better reading than AJ’s more concrete but unsystematic informa-
tion. One or two typical examples of this may he mentioned.
Already in 1613 there appeared Hieronymus Megiserus’s Sep-
tentrio Novantiquus Oder Die newe Nort Welt (Lpz. 1613),
where the whole of Blefken’s book is translated into German
(pp. 12-95), followed by some extracts from Crymogæa (pp.
96—114). The same procedure is adopted by Sam. Purchas, who
translates Blefken in Purchas his Pilgrimes (London 1625), but
balances his work by reproducing extracts from Crymogæa also1.
He does not appear, on the other hånd, to have known AJ’s Ana-
tome. The case of Luke Fox is similar (North-West Fox, Lon-
don 1635)2. Still, in these works AJ was at least given a hearing
besides Blefken, which was not the case in the numerous separate
editions of Blefken’s book in Dutch and German or in the works
of most of the Continental geographers of the seventeenth cen-
tury. It is true that, since Ortelius’s description of Iceland (from
Theatrum 1595; cf. p. 35 above) was a source frequently used
by later geographers, some information from AJ’s pen found its
indirect way into later literature, but AJ’s own writings do not
seem to have been used to any marked extent3. The Frenchman,
Isaac de la Peyrére, used AJ’s works in his Relation de l’Islande
(Paris 1663; written 1644), but he had been in Copenhagen and
become acquainted with Ole Worm, with whom he later corre-
1 See E. Seaton, Literary Relations of England and Scandinavia, pp. 21-2, 225,
246-7.
2 Ib. p. 9.—On other English writers who made use of AJ’s works, see ib. pp. 207,
249-50.
3 I>Th. Lfrs. II 216 (= Gesch. II 226-31).