Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1957, Page 63

CHAPTER II
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AJ written in 1596 and 1597 (III 100-103). In the first, Krag
speaks of NKK, which it is evident AJ had acquired and men-
tioned in a previous letter. Krag complains that NKK is all too
brief, especially in the first part on the origin of the northern
peoples. Both here and in the second letter Krag expresses the
wish that AJ should supplement the meagre account in NKK, and
not least important, collect all information on the earliest his-
tory of the Northern race. Further, he emphasises the im-
portance of obtaining material from Icelandic sources on the
ancient history of Scotland, the Hebrides and Orkney. In this,
as Ellen Jørgensen has pointed out1, we must certainly catch an
echo of the discussions Krag had had with Peter Young, the
envoy of James VI of Scotland, who was in Copenhagen in 1594
on a diplomatic mission and who is known to have talked over
historical problems with Danish humanists. In the second letter
Krag advises AJ to write in Danish, thinking it would be easier
for him to translate the Icelandic sources into Danish rather than
into Latin, because of the family-likenesses of the two languages
—advice which AJ did not take, however, because he found it
easier, as he says, to express himself in Latin than in Danish
(seeI 156).
AJ had probably already begun to collect material in the
winter of 1595—6 (see below p. 181), and at any rate he set to
work in full earnest after he had received Krag’s letter of 1596,
so that before the end of that year he had finished Rerum Dani-
carum fragmenta—1596 is the date which appears on the title-
page. Then he turned his attention to Supplementum historiæ
Norvagicæ, which was completed in the summer of 1597 (the
preface is dated 7. Cal. Augusti). As an appendix to this work
he gives an account of the early history of the Orkneys, obviously
in response to the wishes expressed by Krag in the letter men-
tioned above. Both these works were certainly sent to Krag soon
after their preface was written.
The contents of these works will be described in detail below.
Here we need only observe that Supplementum hist. Norv. con-
1 See Ellen Jørgensen, Historieforskning og Historieskrivning, 102, 104-5 I cf. also
N. Cragii Annaliura libri VI, 1737, pp. 9-10 (Hans Gram).