Gripla - 2022, Page 372

GRIPLA370
Laufási (Suður-Þingeyjarsýsla) and Agnes Eiríksdóttir (also his paternal
aunt) when only four years old, beginning an almost lifelong association
with Laufás. When Magnús Ólafsson died in 1636, Jón Magnússon took
over as pastor there and remained in that office until his death in 1675.
Jón’s wife was Guðrún Jónsdóttir, and they had four children who sur-
vived to adulthood: Jón, Elín, Steinvör and Katrín.22
Like his foster-father and predecessor as pastor at Laufás, Jón was
a man of letters. We know, for example, that on Magnús Ólafsson’s
death, Jón took over work on the dictionary which he had been prepar-
ing for Ole Worm.23 For Hálfdan Einarsson, however, it seems that it
was Jón Magnússon’s rímur which were most worthy of mention, since
it is only Grobbians rímur and the Rímur af Auðbirni that he alludes to
in Sciagraphia.24 The Rímur af Auðbirni tell the story of an avaricious
man’s conversion to a moral way of life and are apparently an original
composition, an oddity among a style of poetry which most often retells
pre-existing material. Another distinctive characteristic is the choice of
religious themes for the rest of Jón’s rímur-œuvre. Finnur Sigmundsson
mentions six such examples: Rímnaflokkur út af ævisögu þeirra fyrstu for-
eldra, Adams og Evu, the Rímur af Bileam, the Rímur af Enok, the Rímur
af kónga- og kroníkubókunum, the Rímur af lífssögu forföðursins Nóa and
the Rímur af Salómon konungi hinum ríka.25 Other poetic genres also
sprung from Jón Magnússon’s pen: we have erfiljóð (epitaphs) composed
for his father and Magnús Ólafsson í Laufási, a huggunarkvæði (conso-
lation poem) for the aforementioned Guðmundur Erlendsson and his
wife Guðrún Gunnarsdóttir after their son Jón Guðmundsson drowned,
and three harmljóð (personal elegies) after Jón himself lost children at a
22 We know of other children of theirs who died at a young age, for example Magnús
(1636–39), Guðrún (born and died 1638) and Steinvör (born and died in 1640). See Þórunn
Sigurðardóttir, Heiður og huggun: Erfiljóð, harmljóð og huggunarkvæði á 17. öld, RIT 91
(Reykjavík: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar í íslenskum fræðum, 2015), 287.
23 Páll Eggert Ólason, Menn og menntir siðskiptaaldarinnar, 4 vols. (Reykjavík: Bókaverzlun
Guðm. Gamalíelssonar/Bókaverzlun Ársæls Árnasonar, 1919–26), IV:273–75.
24 See above, footnote 9.
25 See Finnur Sigmundsson, Rímnatal, I:1–3, 78–79, 120, 314–15, 363, 408–9. The topics of
most of these rímur should be familiar. Bileam is better known in the anglophone world as
Balaam (from the Book of Numbers).