Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana. Supplementum - 01.06.1958, Síða 289

RESUMÉ
Introducíion, p. 13-18. The book on Jon Skonvig and the other rune-copyists deals both with
the oldest Norwegian draughtsmen and also the corresponding Danish ones, from the first (Jon
Skonvig) to the last. The nucleus of the book is made up of six manuscripts from the Arnamag-
naean Collection, which date from 1626 to the end of the 1630’s and contain drawings of rune-
stones and other antiquities together with explanatory text. These six manuscripts formed the
main basis for the first work on runes written in Scandinavia, Ole Worm’s Monumentorum Dani-
corum libri sex, which appeared in 1643 and is the first authoritative work on runes. Tlius they
provide important material both for runology and for scientific research. Not only do they give
(especially in the case of runic inscriptions which have ceased to exist or have been damaged) an
invaluable fund of runological material which make Worm’s illustrations valueless, but, as the
drawings represent predominantly the originals for these illustrations, they provide unique ma-
terial for the assessment of the relationship between draughtsman, wood-carver and scholar.
These Arnamagnaean manuscripts open the door to Worm’s study for us. They were known
by the leading runologists of the previous century (except Ludvig Wimmer), but were not used
for research until this century (Fr. Orluf, Marius Kristensen). Through them and with the
help of Worm’s letters, we obtain intimate knowledge of his—that is to say his time’s—method of
approach. In this connection we discover that the illustrations used in the Monumenta are not,
as believed hitherto, wood cuts, but are produced by a technique which is generally reckoned to
be inferior in the art of illustration (cf. below).
The three manuscripts A.M. 368, 370 and 371 in folio, which contain Norwegian monuments
and antiquities, are published without commentary (Skonvig I, 163-234); their varied drawings
of runic monuments, stone enclosures, barrows, churches and gravestones, road-crosses, “Sverres
Castle” etc, in conjunction with a comprehensive text rich in legend and tradition, make them
into a veritable goldmine for runologists, for research into the period of antiquity and the Middle
Ages, for students of folk-lore, and in fact even art historians can obtain material from them.
The other three manuscripts, A.M. 366, 367 and 369 in folio, contain exclusively Danish ma-
terial, mainly drawings of runes, as well as of gravestones with majuscules and minuscules etc.
The contents of these three manuscripts form the subject matter for detailed treatment in Skon-
vig II. They arewritten and drawn by Jon Skonvig, who was engagedby Worm in 1627 as a trav-
elling draughtsman; Skonvig is also a contributor to one of the Norwegian manuscripts, A.M. 370
in folio dating from 1626.
None of the three Danish manuscripts is the original, in as far as they all—in contrast to A.M.
368 in folio—only contain Skonvig’s final copies of his original sketches made of the monuments
on the spot. A number of the errors in the existing drawings can be attributed to Skonvig’s work