Gripla - 2023, Page 257

THE LIBRARY AT BRÆÐRATUNGA 255
(1681–1741). Oddur lost his fiancée Guðrún Gunnardóttir to smallpox
and never married. Kristín married Vigfús Jónsson (1680–1727) in 1709,
but the couple was childless. Like her cousin Brynjólfur Sveinsson, Helga
Magnúsdóttir had no great-grandchildren, meaning that her library was
not passed down from generation to generation as in the case of Sigríður
Halldórsdóttir’s family; Oddur was Helga’s last living descendant.
Four of Elín’s older children had lived to adulthood: Vigfús (1673–
1707), Hákon (1677–1707), Helga (1679–1707) and Jón (1682–1707). Two
siblings, Hákon and Helga, were married but had no children with their
spouses, Ólöf Jónsdóttir (1685–1777) and Jón Hákonarson (1658–1748),
both of whom survived the epidemic.18
Helga Sigurðardóttir (1683–1707) was the only daughter of Sigríður
Hákonardóttir and Sigurður Sigurðsson to survive to adulthood. After
Sigurður’s death in 1690, Sigríður moved with Helga and Oddur to the
farm of Rauðimelur syðri in Kolbeinsstaðahreppur in Hnappadalssýsla in
West Iceland, where she continued to manage a large household. Helga
Sigurðardóttir was rumoured to have been in a clandestine relationship
with Oddur’s assistant, Jón Sigurðsson (c. 1685–1720), to the displeasure
of her mother and brother. Whether or not Jón and Helga had a tragic af-
fair is unclear, but Jón Sigurðsson’s Tímaríma from c. 1709 is a roman à clef
in verse satirising Sigríður and Oddur.
The manuscript collector Árni Magnússon played a key role in ensur-
ing the survival of several of Helga Magnúsdóttir’s manuscripts, but he
had a difficult relationship with some of her descendants and was misfor-
tunate enough to lose two vellum manuscripts owned by her family in the
Fire of Copenhagen, *Jónsbók and *Bræðratungubók. Árni Magnússon
was in active contact with Vigfús Guðbrandsson before his death from
smallpox in 1707, and it was Vigfús who gave him AM 152 fol. Árni’s
concern for preserving the manuscripts owned by Vigfús and his siblings
in the wake of the smallpox epidemic can be seen in a letter to Hjalti
Þorsteinsson of Vatnsfjörður from February 1708, in which he specifically
asks to purchase manuscripts from Elín Hákonardóttir’s family, if they can
be convinced to part with them (Árni Magnússon 1920, 633–35).
Oddur Sigurðsson inherited his cousin Vigfús’s saga manuscripts. Árni
Magnússon had loaned Vigfús Guðbrandsson a copy of Gull-Þóris saga in
18 Ólöf Jónsdóttir’s second husband was Sigurður Jónsson (1679–1761).