Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1985, Page 73

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infer that his respect for Laing was perhaps not as great as the fulsome
adjectives in his Latin preface might suggest. On the other hånd,
Munch definitely had a better opinion of Laing than of some of the
other Scotsmen whom he met, for example the Advocates’ Librarian
Halkett, whose appointment he regarded as an academic disgrace.39
Whether he privately considered himself to be the ‘discoverer’ of the
true value of the manuscript is impossible to tell, though he would
probably have been less inclined to adopt a narrowly Norwegian
standpoint than some of his professional successors, who lived and
worked in an atmosphere of intense nationalism that had adverse
consequences for both historical and literary studies in Norway
towards the turn of the century.
Shortly after the publication of his edition of the Nordic material
from the manuscript, Munch sent a number of complimentary copies
to Laing for distribution to the Scotsmen whom he had met on his
visit. From the tone of Laing’s note of acknowledgement (dated 27
August 1850) we may surmise that the Signet Librarian had a less than
cordial relationship with Alexander Macdonald, with whom he shared
the epithet celeberrimus in Munch’s preface, and who would now seem
to have been the target of renewed flattery in Munch’s dedication of
his personal copy:
Strictly speaking the copy addressed to the clariss. Macdonald, should have
been sent to Lord Panmure - although his Ldp. might have cared little about it
- as the said Clarissimus happens to have the book as the depositary of various
books & papers borrowed from Ld. P. by Thomson...40
Macdonald, who died only a few months after this note was written,
was Principal Keeper at Register House, Edinburgh, where his by
then elderly collaborator Thomas Thomson had also been employed
for many years. It is interesting to observe that Thomson was ulti-
mately responsible for the presence of the Dalhousie manuscript in
Edinburgh: he had been active in record studies since the beginning of
the century and must at some time have inspected the library of the
39 Letter of 28 April 1850 to George Stephens, Lærde brev I, 420-25, no. 227, at 420-
21.
40 Ibid. pp. 458-59, no. 244.
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