Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana. Supplementum - 01.06.1958, Side 297

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such great interest. The author assumes that it was a hobby of Mejer’s to collect these inscript-
ions, which were not really meant to be published, since he concentrated on unimportant dis-
tinctions between the runes of Worm’s illustrations and the runes of his added transliterations.
For runology in the narrower sense the importance of Mejer’s drawings is infinitesimal; that is,
the first mention of a couple of stones together with a few topographical supplements to Worm.
For the history of the study of runes, however, they are important—just as Albert Holst’s con-
tribution is—because they show (and this can be applied to Pontoppidan’s time) the veneration
of that period for everything to do with runes. Did not Worm (and Bertil Knudsen) take Albert
Holst seriously at one time too? Do not Mejer’s scribbles emphasise the importance of Worm
and Skonvig?
Chapter 14. Soren Abildgaard, p. 207-211. Soren Abildgaard, who is generally reckoned to be
Denmark’s first professional illustrator of antiquities, was a Norwegian like Skonvig, born in
Flekkefjord in 1718, and died in 1791. In 1755 he was appointed to the Royal Privy Archives,
of which Jacob Langebek was head, and from 1756 to 1777 he was sent by Langebek into the
country every year to draw antiquities and other things that might reveal the early history of
the country. In the National Museum there are 15 drawings of runes by Abildgaard. They sup-
port the judgment E. C. Werlauff made on Abildgaard as a drawer of runes, namely that he did
not always copy runes with perfect success and accuracy. A comparison between the unskilled
Skonvig and Abildgaard the specialist draughtsman of the archives turns out to the advantage
of the former. The author attempts to explain this peculiar situation partly by the fact that
Abildgaard never developed such a great interest in runic inscriptions as he did for seals and
gravestones, and partly because, as an epigraphist, he had specialised so much in the reading of
reliefs that the perception of inscribed and weathered runes offered special difficulties to him. The
difficulty of epigraphists in changing from relief to incised letters or ornaments is discussed. It is
established that Abildgaard did not as a matter of principle carry the drawing of runes beyond
the typical copying of older draughtsmen, but on the other hand his drawings show a decided
improvement in what concerns the reproduction of the ornaments and pictures of the runestones
and of the stone contours.
Chapter 15. Martin Friedrich Arendt, p. 212-229. M. F. Arendt was born in Altona in 1773
and died in a ditch near Venice in 1823. He was the “wandering antiquarian” who gave up a
middle-class life and position to dedicate himself to scholarship and to wander up and down in
Europe in search of antiquities and the puzzle of runes. He earned his living partly by “sponging”
on people, partly by arranging libraries, collections of coins etc. for pope, princes and private
landowners. He was fluent in the principal languages, in Latin and Old Norse, a polyhistor
and a barrack-room lawyer.—On the basis of the few papers left by him which are still extant
(in the National Museum), and in which there are inter alia drawings of 10 Danish runestones
(only a fraction of those he had examined and drawn), the author seeks to give a picture of
Arendt as scholar and draughtsman. Apart from the feeble reproduction of Tryggevælde and
Bjolderup, the rest of the drawings are of considerable merit and free from errors, judged from
the standards which Arendt had set himself. Starting from the point of the hammer drawn in
reverse on the Læborg stone (Skonvig II, 225) and in respect of Arendt’s view of the Ravnunge-