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It is, however, also possible to imagine the Proverbia Wiponis being used
to fill blank space earlier in a manuscript, for instance at the end of a bálkr,
and the supposition that Gissur copied from several law-books rather than
one must remain conjecture. If Gissur did copy from more than one law-
book, it is at any rate possible that they all came from Þorvarður’s library
– see “The Sópuður of séra Gottskálk Jónsson í Glaumbæ” below.
Meum legisterium
If Þorvarður’s law-book is lost to us, what of Gissur’s? There do not seem
to be strong grounds for hope on that front either, since it has not been
possible to identify a law-book clearly annotated in Gissur’s hand. There
are some extremely faint marginalia on the last page, 133v, of AM 351 fol.
(Skálholtsbók eldri) which may possibly be in Gissur’s hand but which are
too damaged to make out with any clarity.13 Tantalisingly, almost the only
legible word is the name “Þoruardur”. AM 351 fol. was in Skálholt at the
time of Gissur’s death, and it is therefore hardly in doubt that he would have
had access to it.14 However, even if these marginalia are in Gissur’s hand,
AM 351 fol. would be a poor candidate for the “meum legisterium” to which
Gissur’s title refers – there do not appear to be any other marginalia in his
hand in Skálholtsbók eldri, whereas the title of the fragment strongly im-
plies a law-book into which Gissur copied more than a couple of sentences.
The Sópuður of séra Gottskálk Jónsson í Glaumbæ
One extant manuscript does show some intriguing connections with
Gissur’s fragment: British Library Add. MS. 11242, a miscellany (syrpa)
mainly in the hand of Gottskálk Jónsson of Glaumbær (c. 1524–1590),
known sometimes as Sópuður.15 Ten of the items found in Gissur’s frag-
13 A handful of words about halfway down the right-hand side of the page, about level with
lines 15–17 in the left-hand column, and a few lines at the bottom right beginning about
level with the bottom of the left-hand column of text.
14 Stefán Karlsson, “Hauksnautur. Uppruni og ferill lögbókar,” Sólhvarfasumbl, ed. by Gísli
Sigurðsson (Reykjavík: Menningar- og minningarsjóður Mette Magnussen, 1992), 63.
15 For a fuller discussion of this fascinating collection, see Jón Þorkelsson, “Séra Gottskálk
Jónsson í Glaumbæ og syrpa hans,” Arkiv för nordisk filologi 12 (1896), passim, and
Svanhildur Óskarsdóttir, “Gagn og gaman séra Gottskálks Jónssonar í Glaumbæ,”
Greppaminni. Rit til heiðurs Vésteini Ólasyni sjötugum, ed. by Margrét Eggertsdóttir et al.
(Reykjavík: Hið íslenska bókmenntafélag, 2009), passim.
“EX MARGINIBUS”