Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.10.1967, Blaðsíða 239

213
borsteinm boruards
Son a f>etta
Rijm kuer*
This name is also rare, and the only example of it which I have
found from before the time of Åmi Magnusson occurs in a letter
from Torfasta&ir i Mi5fir5i, dated 1556, of which two copies survive,
and one of these reads the patronymic as borvaldsson, the form
which is preferred by the editors of “Diplomatarium Islandicum”8.
The hånd on this slip might date from this period, but borsteinn
borvarSsson (if that really was his name) was already dead when
the letter was written about him, and I shall later show that our
Ms. cannot have been written by that time. If this is the man re-
ferred to, there may have been a mistake made when a re-binding
was done at the beginning of the 18th century, by which this slip
of parchment has been attached to the wrong Ms.—but it is per-
haps more likely that the owner of this name has unfortunately
eluded the records, and that we shall never know who he was.
Besides the usual saints’ days, this calendar notes the dates of
various historical events, some from early Christian history, such
as the dates of death of Jerome (given as March 31st, 420), Ambrose
(April 4th, 401), and several others; but others concern more recent
history, and no fewer than eleven, in the same hånd as the rest,
give the dates of 16th century events. The latest of these is the
death of Clafur Hjaltason, first Lutheran Bishop of Holar, in Janu-
ary, 1569. It follows that the Ms. was not written before 1569, when
Gunnar Gislason was already a prominent man in Skagafjor&ur,
and it is quite likely that it was written for him. It is even pos-
sible, in view of the basic similarity between the main hånd of the
Ms. and that of the second note at the end, that he may have written
it himself some years before the second note was written, and that
his hånd had changed slightly in the meantime. But we cannot be
sure even that he was the writer of the note, although it seems likely,
so it is perhaps best not to give too much weight to the possibility
that he wrote the whole Ms. But it is clear, at least, that the Ms.
was written for someone who had an interest in Bishop Jon Arason,
‘Diplomatarium Islandicum”, Vol. 13, Reykjavlk, 1933-9, p. 157.