Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series A - 01.06.2003, Side 227
THE L RECENSION
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dent in Copenhagen. He was there from October 1692 to May 1694,
and he made a second visit 1695-96. On his slip Ámi Magnússon also
observes that the book had at some time been in the hands of Jón Olafs-
son (see below on AM 396 fol.), who had written some marginal notes
in it. One such, ‘Elldur J he[k]lufialle’, is on fol. 39r (with reference to
the text, Bysk.s., 422/5), while on 57r and 57v Jón writes correct
‘Gyssrs’ in the margin where 205, following L1, has ‘Isleifs’; see L
21/2 and 21/21.
Jón Gissurarson gave 1644 as the date of his copy of Jóns saga in
AM 205 fol., and the rest of the volume must have been written about
the same time. It was soon sent to Skálholt, where Brynjólfur Sveins-
son, Jón’s half-brother, was bishop 1639-75. (Connections were close,
not least through Jón’s son, sr. Torfi (1617-89; ÍÆ V, 27-28), who had
been in his uncle’s service before and after his student years in Copen-
hagen, 1642-46, and was resident priest at Skálholt 1647, 1650 and
1662-67, as well as holding the living of Gaulverjabær; Prestatal, 76,
99.) Bishop Brynjólfur commissioned a copy of Jón’s accounts of the
Skálholt bishops in the Reformation period, originally with 205 and
AM 109 fol., now in AM 215 fok, from sr. Jón Erlendsson (parson of
Villingaholt 1639; died 1672; ÍÆ III, 105-06); his copy is in AM 216
fol.
While sr. Þorsteinn Björnsson (c. 1612-75; ÍÆ V, 196-97; P. Spring-
borg in: Latin og nationalsprog i Norden, 157-71) held the living of
Útskálar (Gullbringusýsla) 1638-60, he assembled with the aid of sev-
eral amanuenses two grand collections of texts. The contents of one of
his two volumes are now dispersed among various numbers in the Ar-
namagnæan collection (Gardar VIII, 82-83; on AM 204 fok see Lau-
rentius saga, 1-lii). The other came into the collection donated by Re-
sen to the University Library and virtually all destroyed in the great
fire of 1728. Jón Helgason, following S. Birket Smith, has shown that
the year 1685 on the title-page of the printed catalogue of Resen’s col-
lection is misleading - parts of it cannot have been printed until two or
three years later (Opuscula VIII, 26-30). In the catalogue the Jóns
saga copy appears as item 22 in the volume, entered under ‘Lpbenum-
mer 35 (Capsa VIII, Ord. I. in fol.)’ as ‘28 Liber Islandicus M. S. cum
præfatione Thorsteni Biornonis, hasce continens historias ... Jonæ
Sancti 0gmundi filii primi Holensis Episcopi historiam’ (the complete
entry for the volume is in Opuscula VIII, 39-40; abridged in Hánd-