Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1985, Síða 66
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extending to the year 1443 and translated into Latin from an Old
Norse original (art. 3).
On his homeward journey26 Munch had seen two fifteenth-century
documents in the Rigsarkiv (National Archives) in Copenhagen which
appeared to him to be in the same hånd as the Dalhousie manuscript.
The first of these was a ‘defence’ of Earl William Sinclair of Orkney
issued by the townspeople of Kirkwall in February 1460 (or 1461?),
and the second a letter given by the same Earl William at Roslin, his
family’s Scottish residence, in September 1461.27 A note to David
Laing dated 10 February 1850 contains the first announcement of this
supposed discovery,28 which was pursued by Munch in the spring of
185029 and resulted in the inclusion in the volume issued the same
summer not only of a partial facsimile of f. lv of the Dalhousie manu-
script but also of a complete facsimile of the two Copenhagen docu-
ments. Whereas the identity of the scribal hånds had been stated quite
categorically in Munch’s note to Laing, his introduction to the subse-
quent publication contained a more cautious formulation: here he
wrote that the Dalhousie manuscript and the documents in the Danish
archives were in the same ‘or at all events a very similar’ hånd.30 His
reservations on the subject were not, however, such as to restrain him
from speculating that the manuscript might have been compiled at the
26 See Munch’s letter to George Stephens dated 12 February 1850, in Gustav Indrebø
and Oluf Kolsrud (eds.), Lærde brev fraa og til P. A. Munch I (Oslo, 1924), pp. 410-13,
no. 222.
27 Rigsarkivet D 10, Orknøerne, 29.2.1460 (recte 28.2.1461?; olim Skoti. 19) and
29.9.1461 (olim Skoti. 21). Printed in DN V (1861), pp. 599-600, no. 827, and II (1852),
pp. 629-30, no. 840. The date of the first document, if not given in accordance with the
Norwegian calendar, would be 28.2.1461: cf. J. Storer Clouston (ed. and tr.), Records of
the Earldom of Orkney 1299-1614, SHS ser. II, 7 (1914), p. 51, n. 4. The close relation-
ship in content between D 10/29.2.1460 and a third document in Rigsarkivet, viz. D
10/28.6.1461 (olim Skoti. 20), might support a non-Norwegian dating of the former. For
the text of this third document see DN V, 605-07, no. 836.
28 Lærde brev I, 407-10, no. 221.
29 See the correspondence with C. C. Rafn, ibid. pp. 413-15, no. 223, and pp. 418-19,
no. 226.
30 “Primo statim aspectu apparet, hane manum [the hånd of the Dalhousie manu-
script] characterem medii sæculi XVti præ se ferre, nec sane ullum dubium esse potest,
quin vixerit scriba hoc tempore: asservantur enim in archivis regiis Flafniæ inter
Orcadensia binæ literæ chartaceæ, eådem ipså, aut saltem simillimå manu scriptæ, de
annis 1460 et 1461...” (Munch, Symbolæ, p. II; my italics).