Gripla - 2022, Blaðsíða 394

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Heilráð barnagafræðing meistara Antoni Mureti (Good Advice of the Child
Discipline Expert, Antoine Muret);78 Vilbaldsrímur, of which Parsons
tells us that “steering young people away from a life of crime is a cen-
tral theme;”79 and his numerous poetic translations of Aesop’s fables, a
favoured didactic text in the early modern period. As far as the second
genre, satirical or grotesque literature, is concerned, while not typical
of Guðmundur’s writing, a couple of examples can be found amongst
his œuvre: a comic and somewhat grotesque Grýlukvæði exists, which
has recently been suggested to be a collaborative work by Guðmundur
Erlendsson and Ásgrímur Magnússon.80 It is easy to see some kind of
family resemblance between the child-eating Grýla and the child-corrupt-
ing Gribba. Guðmundur’s “Skeggi til Laugu skrifar og segir” (Skeggi writes
to Lauga and says) too is a “parody of a love-letter,” and Katelin Parsons
has also suggested that Bríetarkvæði, a poem which ends with a naked fe-
male vagrant lying collapsed on the floor in a puddle of suet, may also be
the work of Guðmundur.81 Sighvatur Grímsson Borgfirðingur, moreover,
tells us, with regard to Guðmundur’s illegitimate fathering of a child c.
1617, that “mælt er að Guðmundur hafi ort um barnsmóður sína heldur
kímilegt klámkvæði” (it is said that Guðmundur composed a rather amus-
ing pornographic poem about the mother).82 Thus grotesque, satirical and
bawdy literature was not out of the question for this clergyman, despite
Páll Eggert Ólason’s claim cited in the introduction to this article.83 With
regards to Guðmundur’s literary influence from early modern Germany, a
recent article by Þórunn Sigurðardóttir and Þorsteinn Helgason highlights
that his poem on the destruction of Magdeborg in 1631 was probably writ-
ten soon after the event and that “accounts of events in Magdeburg must
certainly have reached Denmark by various channels” but that “from there,
and perhaps even directly from Germany, the news could have reached
78 Parsons, “Songs for the End of the World,” 130. See the text in JS 232 4to, ff. 114r–116r.
79 Parsons, “Songs for the End of the World,” 131.
80 Parsons, “Grýla in Sléttuhlíð,” 228.
81 Parsons, “Songs for the End of the World,” 78.
82 See Sighvatur Grímsson Borgfirðingur’s Prestaævir á Íslandi (Skagafjarðarprófastsdæmi) in
Lbs 2371 II 4to, pp. 1439–40 (ff. 297r–297v). See also Þórunn Sigurðardóttir, “‘Á Krists
ysta jarðar halaʼ: Um séra Guðmund Erlendsson í Felli og verk hans,” Skagfirðingabók 37
(2016): 171–84, at 175.
83 Páll Eggert Ólason, Saga Íslendinga, 335.