Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.2003, Qupperneq 286

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Ian McDougall
the hånd of Jon Finnsson of Flatey, the well-known owner of Flateyjar-
bok, who lent that famous miscellany to Skålholt Cathedral some years
before 1612, and eventually made a present of the book to Bishop Brynj-
olfur Sveinsson in the summer of 1647. That Jon of Flatey once owned
the manuscript is confirmed by a note written on a paper inlay inside
the front cover of the book: “Kvered heyrer til Jone | Finns Syne. 11633”
(Kålund 1889-1894, U, 410, nr. 2354). Jon Helgason (1951, 139) tentat-
ively suggested that Ami Magnusson may have received this book from
Jon Finnsson’s son Loftur (see Bogi Benediktsson 1881-1932, II, 60,
598), from whom Åmi received another collection of nmur transcribed
by Jon Finnsson (AM 146a 8vo) in 1703. It is, however, possible that
Ami acquired AM 145 8vo from Jon Finnsson’s daughter-in-law,
GuSnin Ogmundardottir, from whom he had received several other
books either written or once owned by Jon of Flatey, some of which
were also bound in leaves from old manuscript books.7
Nothing is known of the provenance of AM 142 4to, a collection of
laws. The manuscript, written in several seventeenth-century hånds, ap-
pears to be a transcript which Ami Magnusson had made for him in Ice-
land, although the scribes have not been identified (see Jon Helgason
1951, 157).
7 Cf. the so-called Codex Lindesianus (John Rylands Library of Manchester, Icelandic
MS. no. 1, formerly AM 462 12mo, lost from the Amamagnæan collection since some
time after 1731, when it was included in the catalogue of Ami’s manuscripts drawn up by
Jon Olafsson), and its “twin”, AM 435 12mo, both of which books Ami acquired from
Gudrun Ogmundardottir (see Kålund 1909, 43; cf. Kålund 1889-1894, II, 484, nr. 2522;
and 500, n. after nr. 2549). Codex Lindesianus is bound up in a fragment of a Latin ritual
manuscript in which part of Psalm 21:5 is visible. Jon Finnsson’s own transcript of part of
Codex Lindesianus survives as AM 472 12mo (see Kålund 1889-1894, II, 503, nr. 2563).
AM 757b 4to, two fifteenth-century leaves of the Third Grammatical Treatise in Snorra
Edda, were used to bind a small computus in Jon Finnsson’s hånd which Ami received
from Bishop Jon Amason in 1724, and which the Bishop acquired from Gudrun Og-
mundardottir (see Kålund 1889-1894, II, 180, nr. 1874: “t>effe .2. bldd voru utanum {tad
litla Rimqver, er eg feck af Mag. Jone Amafyni 1724, enn hann hafdi feinged af Gudrunu
dgmundardottur i Flatey. Kvered var med hendi Jons Finnz fonar, og innfcftningen a
kverenu var gdmul”). What Ami calls “|iad litla Rimqver” is surely AM 472 12mo. AM
162 8vo, a manuscript of Snorra Edda which Ami received from Gudrun in 1704, was
once bound in a Latin antiphonary written in Iceland in the thirteenth century, now Acc.
7b, Hs. 32 (Kålund 1889-1894, II, 424, nr. 2372; MGA 1987,39, Gjerløw 1980,1, 112; II,
pi. 114). AM 146a 8vo, another collection of rimur transcribed by Jon Finnsson, was also
bound in a Latin antiphonary written in Iceland, probably at the beginning of the fifteenth
century, now Acc. 7b, Hs. 37 (Kålund 1889-1894, II, 411-412, nr. 2355; MGA 1987, 44;
Gjerløw 1979, 258-259).