Gripla - 2023, Side 253
THE LIBRARY AT BRÆÐRATUNGA 251
to prepare his body for burial, two years before her own death, and later
to mark his burial site with a silver plate (Jón Halldórsson 1903–1915,
vol. 1, 305, vol. 2., 376–80).15 Helga and Brynjólfur’s membership to the
Icelandic elite did not protect them from the loss of many loved ones:
Helga’s father died in December 1662, months before Ragnheiður suc-
cumbed to illness in March 1663, while Ragnheiður’s brother Halldór died
in Yarmouth, England, in 1666. Helga lost her beloved son Vigfús to mea-
sles in November 1670, four months after the passing of Brynjólfur’s wife,
Margrét Halldórsdóttir (1615–1670). The young Þórður—Brynjólfur’s last
living descendant—died at Skálholt in 1673.
Helga’s biography indicates that her health and strength deteriorated
rapidly after her son’s death, although she could still hold a pen to sign her
name on JS 28 fol. and AM 65 fol. on 31 January 1675. Both manuscripts
had been personal gifts from Bishop Brynjólfur to Helga, which she passed
to her daughters during her own lifetime: the former to her youngest
daughter Jarþrúður and the latter to her eldest daughter Elín, who lived
with her husband in Vatnsfjörður in the Westfjords. A comparable gift
was presumably made to her middle daughter, Sigríður, and this may have
been one of at least four folio volumes owned by Sigríður in the hand of
Jón Erlendsson of Villingaholt, a highly favoured scribe in Brynjólfur’s
scholarly network, who also copied both JS 28 fol. and AM 65 fol. (see
Appendix). *Bræðratungubók had already left Bræðratunga with Vigfús
in 1668, as did a handwritten prayer book given to him by his sister Elín
(see below) and possibly also his father’s copy of Jónsbók. There was thus
a steady inflow and outflow of books in the library of Bræðratunga, which
appears to have been a key hub within a larger network of manuscript
circulation and use rather than a centre of manuscript production like
Skálholt or an endpoint for manuscript preservation as Árni Magnússon’s
library would become decades later.
15 Bishop Brynjólfur was the only pre-modern bishop of Skálholt known to have chosen a
burial site outside the cathedral. Jón Halldórsson (1665–1736) is critical of Brynjólfur’s
nephew, Torfi Jónsson, and to a lesser degree Brynjólfur’s other heirs, for neglecting the
maintenance of the site, which already in Jón’s day had vanished into the landscape. Part of
Brynjólfur’s private correspondence has survived in Árni Magnússon’s collection, including
copies of Brynjólfur’s letters to Helga and a copy of a letter from Helga to Bishop Þorlákur
Skúlason of Hólar, written only days after her husband Hákon’s death. On Brynjólfur and
Helga’s friendship and letters, see Parsons forthcoming.