The Icelandic Canadian - 01.06.1956, Side 35

THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
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some were lost at sea or by fire in the
Royal Library at Copenhagen in 1728,
but the rest, a total of about two thous-
and manuscripts and six thousand
documents, are still preserved in the
library at Copenhagen .
Grimur Jonsson Thorkelin, (1752-
1829), was another noted Icelandic
antiquarian. He secured his Doctor
of Philosophy degree at the University
of Edinburgh, Scotland. Among his
works is a translation into Latin of
one of the Sagas of Icelanders, Eyr-
byggja Saga. One of his noteworthy
achievements was the saving from
destruction of the great old English
epic Beowulf, the most important
single monument of the Anglo-Saxon
period. It is an heroic poem of 3182
full lines. In 1786 the only copy of this
epic poem was a 1000 A.D. manuscript
which for years had lain a-moldering
in the library of a 16th century Eng-
lish collector named Sir Robert Bruce
Cotton. In 1700 Sir Robert’s descend-
ants turned his library over to the
government, but in 1731 a good deal
of it was destroyed by fire. Beowulf
emerged scorched and seared, but still
no one did anything to preserve what
remained. Then it happened that
Grimur Jonsson Thorkelin arrived in
London on a hunt for some historical
data. After hearing about the manu-
script by accident, though he did not
appreciate its literary importance, he
copied it letter by letter. His copy
found its way to the Royal Library of
Copenhagen. It was among the treas-
ured documents to survive the British
bombardment of Copenhagen in 1807,
when England attacked Denmark dur-
ing the Napoleonic war.1
Owing to the fact that Arngrim Jons-
1. The famed Thorkelin transcript of Beowulf
was published about three years ago, edited
by Professor Kemp Malone, of Johns Hopkins
University.
son, as well as most writers at that
time, wrote all his books in Latin, the
books had a small circulation. Futher-
more, many of these books were not
published but were preserved for many
years in manuscript form, so that only
a few scholars had access to them..
Halliday Sparling states in his intro-
duction to Wolsunga Saga, (translated
by Eirikur Magnusson and William
Morriss and published by the Norreona
Society in 1807), “Not before 1770
when Bishop Percy translated Mallett’s
Northern Antiquities, was anything
known here of Iceland and its litera-
ture. Only within the latter part of
the 19th century has it been studied,
and little had been done as yet. It is,
however, becoming ever clearer, and
to an increasing number, how suprem-
ely important is Icelandic as a word-
hoard to the English-speaking peoples,
and that in its legend, song, and story
there is a very mine of noble and pleas-
ant beauty and high manhood. That
which has been done, one may hope, is
but the beginning of a great new birth,
that shall give back to our language
and literature all that heedlessness and
ignorance bid fair for a while to
destroy.”
The French writer, Paul Henry de
Mallett, became intensly interested in
Northern Antiquities. In 1755 he wrote
L’Histoire Denmarca. The introduc-
tion to this book was translated into
English by the eminent writer and ant-
iquarian, Bishop Thomas Percy, (1729-
1810). It is among his older works
titled: Northern Antiquities, publish-
ed in 1770. Bishop Percy also translated
five selections of Ancient Icelandic
poetry.
The well known poet and novelist,
Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), showed
considerable interest in Old Icelandic
literature as is evident by the fact that