Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1957, Page 87

CHAPTER II
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remarks on the purity of Icelandic in Crymogæa (see II 30), it
becomes a matter of some significance that he should have taken
practical steps to improve and purify the language.
Two of the translations printed (nos. 7 and 8) are in verse.
AJ has also left a few poems and single verses in Icelandic, some
of which were printed during his lifetime, others remaining still
in manuscript. They will not be catalogued here, and the reader
is referred to the survey in PEOl. Mom. IV 632-42. To be
added to his list are the verses AJ wrote as a dedication in a
copy of Crymogæa sent by him to the Rev. Einar SigurSsson (see
below pp. 272—3), and a longer poem printed in Bishop GuS-
brandur’s Visnabåk 1612, pp. 208-11 (Ollum heimi otru spillir).
The poem is anonymous in the printed text, but is ascribed to AJ
by GuSmundur Andrésson (see IRSA 2, 1948, p. 37 note and p.
141), and Ludvig Harboe says (Dånische Bibliothec VIII, 1746,
p. 89) that he had seen a copy of the Vlsnabok 1612 in which
AJ had written himself as the author of the poem.
AJ’s poems were not received with any great favour by Årni
Magnusson and AJ’s grandson, Pall Vidalin (see Vlsnakver Pals
Vidalin’s p. XX), but their criticism is unjustified insofar as AJ’s
verse is by no means worse than most of the religious poetry of
his day. At the same time, his production in this genre was neither
large nor outstanding.
Preserved in manuscript are three essays by AJ on the laws of
inheritance in the Icelandic law-code, Jonsbåk. The text of the
oldest of them corresponds on the whole to AJ’s treatment of
this subject in Crymogæa (II 81-4). The other two are contribu-
tions to a discussion to which AJ’s first essay had given rise.
The second essay was written in 1606, so that the first must be
somewhat older. The first essay is printed, with AJ cited as
the author, in Jån Rugman, Greinir Or Jjeim Gaumlu Laugum,
Upsalæ 1667, pp. 42—51. See further on this subject PEOl.
Mom. IV 244-5.
GuSmundur Andrésson ascribes another work of a legal char-
acter to AJ (see IRSA 2, 1948, p. 6o27-28); the title he gives is
“Um hålfu meira”. This work is now lost, but proof of its ex-
istence is found in manuscript AM 61a 8vo, fol. 33r—48V, a dis-
sertation on different expressions in the law-book which, accord-
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