Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1968, Page 15
Årni Magnusson (Lat.: Arnas Magnæus) (1663—1730) was a learned
Icelander, professor and librarian in Copenhagen. From his youth, and
especially during a sojourn in Iceland 1702-12, — in order to write a
rental of the country, — he assiduously collected old Icelandic manu-
scripts of all kinds, and sent them to Denmark; and this vast harvest of
his forms the Arnamagnæan Collection (AM).
Just as was the case with the vellum fragments in the Norwegian
State Archives, viz. that those of them which contained parts of old
Norse literature were first observed and appreciated, and much later
those which were of a liturgical kind, — such was also the case with the
manuscripts of the Arnamagnæan Collection, only that those containing
old Norse or Icelandic literature were vastly copious, and have been,
from the very first and till this day, an invaluable source of knowledge
for almost all branches of the social and spiritual life of the Norse people
in the Middle Ages; and it was only much later that the documents of
ecclesiastical usages were looked into.
In the years 1893-96 Dr. Jon Porkelsson the younger published the
work “Islenzkar årti'Sa-skrar” (Icelandic Obituaries) in which, among
other things, he brought to light some of the manuscripts of the last
mentioned kind, copying the words, but not the music, of the “Officium
sancti Thorlaci” in AM 241 a, fol. (Thorlacus, bishop of Skalholt (d.
1193), was the Icelandic national saint), and of a hymnus in honour
of the same (AM 382, 4to). In the said publication he likewise gave
a verbal transcript of the sequence for the Norwegian saint Hallvardus,
mentioned above (AM 241 b, IV, fol.).
And then — shortly after 1900 — the aforesaid transcripts by Bjarni
Porsteinsson and Dr. Reiss appeared.
I was richly rewarded for my visit to the Arnamagnæan Collection.
Previously, Mr. Guftbrandnr Jonsson, librarian of the National Library
in Reykjavfk, had picked out and grouped together most of the leaves
containing sequences, and numbered the latter, the total amounting to
more than a hundred. By kind permission from the Curator of the Col-
lection, Professor Dr. Jon Helgason, all these manuscripts were lent to
the University Library of Oslo, where photos of them were taken for
the use of the present treatise.
It is, for me, an agreeable duty to thank several institutions and per-
sons who have made it possible for me to write this book, and who have
helped me with its contents.
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