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ible, but in his role as a priest he might also have owned a portable
duo decimo copy of Margrétar saga for use as a birthing aid within the
wider community. This could also explain why the priest at Laufás in the
fifteenth century owned such an object. The manuscript lost any church-
sanctioned function during the transition to Lutheranism and passed at
some point to his granddaughter Helga Aradóttir, either as her inheritance
or as a personal gift.
Árni Magnússon received the manuscript in a package sent from Jón
Halldórsson of Hítardalur (1665–1736) that arrived on 10 July 1728, just
three months before the disastrous Fire of Copenhagen that destroyed
Árni’s home. Árni had already discarded the seventeenth-century binding
that might have provided more insight into its later history, possibly in the
hope that it contained the missing leaf. A letter from Jón that accompanied
Margrétar saga describes it as “fylgiande hiatruarfullum papiskum bænum”
(‘accompanied by superstitious popish prayers’) but does not state its
origins.63 However, Jón’s son Vigfús Jónsson identified the manuscript’s
owner (and the scribe behind the Margrétar saga rebinding project) as the
late Jón Þórðarson of Bakki in Melasveit.64
Jón Þórðarson (1648–1719) was the illegitimate son of Þórður Hinriks-
son (d. 1652), who held the administrative position of sýslumaður and
later landsskrifari. Þórður sailed to Copenhagen as a young man for his
university studies in 1626, and his first wife was a Danish woman, Anna
Pétursdóttir (d. 10 July 1647), who returned with him to Iceland. The
couple and their children lived at Innri-Hólmur on the Akranes peninsula,
which is presumably also where Jón was born, although his mother’s name
is unknown. Þórður remarried in 1648, and his second wife was Þórlaug
Einarsdóttir, but he had no children by his second wife, making Jón his
youngest son. Although Jón’s father died when he was only four, he was
fortunate in that he was fostered by his step-mother, Þórlaug, who was a
well-to-do widow. Þórlaug gave Jón an initial share of the Bakki farm in
1668, when he reached the age of twenty. She promised additional property
to Jón on the unusual condition that he show her deference and obedience:
63 Árni Magnússon, Arne Magnussons Private Brevveksling, 191.
64 Jón Samsonarson, “Ævisöguágrip Hallgríms Péturssonar eftir Jón Halldórsson,” Afmælisrit
til Dr. Phil. Steingríms J. Þorsteinssonar prófessors 2. júlí 1971 frá nemendum hans (Reykjavík:
Leiftur, 1971), 74–88, at 83.
MAGIC, M A R G R É T A R S A G A