Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1957, Blaðsíða 289

CRYMOGÆA
269
large number of Icelandic manuscripts of various kinds. These
sources have been dealt with together in Chapter III of the In-
troduction, and since many of them are used either solely or
principally in Crymogæa, there is no need to give a separate list
of them at this point. We give here however the numbers of the
manuscripts used by AJ in Crymogæa, as they appear in Chapter
III above: 1-3, 5, 7, 8, 16-20, 22-26, 28-33, 35-4G 43. 48-
52, 56—58, 64. That means, in faet, that he used in this work by
far the greater number of sagas of Icelanders and most of the
Kings’ sagas which at any time provided him with material, as
well as the Bishops’ sagas and annals whose use can be detected
in his writings; in addition, there are legal texts and various
other works including a not inconsiderable number of doeuments
(no. 64).
In his rendering of various Icelandic sources AJ has at times
adopted into Crymogæa shorter and longer passages from Sup-
plementum, sometimes verbatim, sometimes with minor or major
alterations (see II 331-31, 9218-25, io528-ii77, I2033-I247, 1255-
1268, i43e-i4510, 14510—1533, i622-i642, i7023-i7i21, i765—28
and notes). In many cases his alterations and additions reveal
that he was not content with merely copying his old excerpts, but
made a new examination of the originals. This method was very
naturally due to the faet that Supplementum was not intended for
publication and AJ could only expect it to be known to a few
Danish historians.
AJ derived the chronological framework of the history of
Iceland in Book III of Crymogæa from the annals (after 1394
from Gottskalksannall alone). In addition, he obtained a certain
amount of material from doeuments, some of which are now only
known in AJ’s versions (see Introduction, Ch. III no. 64).
Further, as was noted above, AJ culled various facts from Huit-
feldt’s history of Denmark. In the history of the sixteenth cen-
tury AJ adds a good deal of material to Gottskalksannall, de-
rived in part from tradition and in part from his personal know-
ledge of individual topics, such as e.g. the career of the Law-
man, Jon Sigmundsson, and the lawsuits that arose from it, and
the life and episcopate of Bishop GuSbrandur. As was pointed
out in the Introduction, this section takes the shape of a defence