Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.10.1967, Side 294

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sponsa”. Sperling found the majority of the titles in printed books, the young-
est of which was published in 1697. From an expression employed by Arni
Magnusson in his notes it ean be concluded that he ean not have written them
after 1700. Both the catalogue itself and the notes must, then, be dated to
the years 1697-1700.
2. Among the works named by Sperling are found as items 14-16 “De-
scriptio Islandiæ”, “Historia Geniorum in Islandia” and “Islands Beskrivelse
i danske Rum” (a description of Iceland in Danish verse), all of whieh be-
longed to Peder Syv’s (1631-1702) MS colleetion. F urt her information about
these items is to be found in Arni Magnusson’s catalogue of P. Syv’s MSS
(AM 1050 4to X). After the death of P. Syv the three works were bought by
F. Rostgaard (1671-1745) and when Rostgaard sold his library by auction
in 1726, they were bought by Arni Magnusson. In the auction catalogue
they appear together as item nr. 602. None of them, however, is to be found
in the Amamagnæan colleetion and they must, therefore, have been de-
stroyed in the fire of Copenhagen in 1728.
In the subsequent sections of the preceding paper all the information that
can be gleaned about the three works is assembled.
3. Descriptio Islandiæ. In the year 1928 Fritz Burg published from a MS
in Hamburg a Latin work entitled Qualiscunque Descriptio Islandiæ
(= QDI). In the introduction Burg discussed the history of this work and
the use that was made of it in the 17th century. Jakob Benediktsson has
since made some new observations on the matter. The results of their in-
vestigations are summarised in the paper. Burg assumed that the Descriptio
Islandiæ that was in the possession of P. Syv was a MS of QDI. A series of
notes made by P. Syv from his MS confirm the correctness of this identifica-
tion. Jakob Benediktsson has provided a number of arguments in favour of
the theory that the author of QDI was bishop Oddur Einarsson (1559-1630).
Sperling names as the author Gisli Einarsson, who may have been Oddur
Einarsson’s younger brother of this name (c. 1570-1659 or 1660), but the
source of Sperling’s information is not known.
4. Historia Geniorum. P. Syv quotes from this work on two occasions in
his edition of Danish ballads from 1695. From the quotations it appears that
the work contained ghost stories from sagas (G9ngu-Hrolfs saga, Grettis
saga), a story from Skålholt c. 1500 of a man’s combat with ghosts, and an
aceount to the effeet that the Danish king Valdemar IV (Valdemar Atterdag
f 1375) was seen after his death in the company of numerous black beings.
P. Syv did not know who the author was and refers to him only as the
Icelandic author. In AM 1050 4to X Arni Magnusson quotes the opening
words of the work and from these it can be seen that it was in Latin. Arni
says that it was divided into seven chapters and that it was anonymous.
Among the MSS in the possession of P. H. Resen (1625-88) there was one
which, in a catalogue of his colleetion from the year 1685, is called Tractatus