Gripla - 2022, Síða 178

GRIPLA176
their written contract ensured her foster-son’s legal rights in the event of
her death, but she did not hand over her wealth without providing for her
own interests.65 Nearly two decades later, on 29 November 1687, Þórlaug
and Jón made a second written agreement following up on the first, which
again contained provisions for Þórlaug’s support during her lifetime.66
Jón was a member of the Lögrétta law council that met annually at the
Alþingi at Þingvellir, and he seems to have had a keen interest in medieval
manuscripts. Árni Magnússon received two medieval manuscripts from
Vigfús Jónsson that Jón Þórðarson had formerly owned: a copy of
Lárentíus saga (AM 406 a I 4to) and a copy of Stjórn (AM 617 4to). Almost
nothing is known about Jón’s wife, Helga Sigurðardóttir, except that her
parents were the landowning farm couple Sigurður Árnason (1622–1690)
and Elín Magnúsdóttir (1636–1723) of Stóru-Leirárgarðir, who married in
1651 and had at least eleven children, of whom eight were alive at the time
of the 1703 census. Helga had died before 11 June 1691, when her brothers
Bjarni and Halldór drew up a contract concerning the division of property
inherited from their late father and deceased sisters Helga and Margrét.67
The formal contract between Þórlaug and Jón in 1687 likely anticipated his
marriage, since it provided for his wife’s financial security more concretely
than his former agreement with his foster-mother.
In an important article on the transmission of medieval manuscripts
in early modern Iceland, Susanne Arthur demonstrates the importance of
kinship ties, especially maternal and matrimonial connections, in tracing
the movements of manuscripts.68 She points out that manuscripts were
considered appropriate gifts for a groom and his family to present to his
bride (a supplement to the dowry known as the tilgjöf), and she traces the
provenance of several medieval manuscripts in this way. New manusc-
ripts were also created as bridal gifts, and a surviving example of this
practice is JS 232 4to, copied by Skúli Guðmundsson in 1688–1689 at the
65 Gunnar F. Guðmundsson (ed.), Jarðabréf frá 16. og 17. öld: Útdrættir (Copenhagen: Hið
íslenska fræðafélag í Kaupmannahöfn, 1993), 29.
66 Gunnar F. Guðmundsson (ed.), Jarðabréf frá 16. og 17. öld, 40. In 1694, Jón bought a minor
share in the Bakki farm from Þórlaug’s nephew, Gísli Nikulásson, and it may be that that
Þórlaug died in that year and left some property to her siblings’ children.
67 Gunnar F. Guðmundsson (ed.), Jarðabréf frá 16. og 17. öld, 202.
68 Susanne Arthur, “The Importance of Marital and Maternal Ties in the Distribution of
Icelandic Manuscripts from the Middle Ages to the Seventeenth Century,” Gripla 23
(2012): 201–33.