The Saga Heritage: Árni Magnússon and the Collecting of Icelandic Manuscripts

by Dr. Már Jónsson

Margaret and Richard Beck Lectures
University of Victoria, Clearihue C305
March 24, 1998

I.

Árni Magnússon, one of Icelandʼs national heroes, was born in 1663. His father was a priest and so were both his grandfathers and his two brothers. He went to Copenhagen when he was nineteen years old to study at the university and became assistant to the Royal Antiquarian, Thomas Bartholin. He worked six years for him, then spent two years in Germany, and on his return to Copenhagen in 1697 he became secretary to the Royal Danish Archives. Four years later, at thirty-eight, he was fortunate enough to get a position as professor of history at the University of Copenhagen. He then spent ten years in Iceland as a member of a royal commission with the instructions to make a register of all farms in the country, take a census, and investigate whether law and order were being maintained by the countryʼs officials, merchants, and other people in positions of power. It was a complete investigation of conditions in Iceland that aimed at a general recovery of economics and politics in this extremely poor country of fifty thousand people. After his return to Copenhagen in 1713 he spent a quiet life as professor and librarian until his death in the beginning of 1730.

Árni Magnússonʼs energy throughout his life was spent building up the collection of manuscripts that now bears his name. It has been divided between the two Arnamagnæan institutes at the universities of Reykjavík and Copenhagen. Árniʼs collection contained some 2,500 items, the earliest dating from the late twelfth century. Vellum manuscripts comprise about one sixth of the collection, and many of these are fragmentary or defective since Árni appreciated even the smallest fragments that could have cultural and historical significance. The bulk of the collection thus consists of post-medieval manuscripts that he collected or paid scribes to write for him. Manuscripts that contain family sagas numbered about two hundred. Árni also collected documents and charters and in his collection there are 5,500 diplomas and no less than 10,400 apographs, transcriptions of documents that he could not buy. Over half of these are from Iceland.

There is no way of dealing with all that in forty-five minutes, so I will concentrate on his first years as a collector of manuscripts and producer of transcripts, as he was at that time interested in the Middle Ages, Icelandʼs saga heritage. A short introduction on the prehistory of Árni Magnússon is necessary.

II.

Collecting manuscripts is an intellectual activity rather than an aesthetic one. Contents are more important than looks. Many manuscripts are of course important as artistic objects and thus collectable because of their beauty, but the purpose then is more to admire them than to use them. When scholars in Alexandria in the first and second centuries after Christ searched for manuscripts with the works of Homer, they hoped to arrive at a complete text. Good manuscripts were old manuscripts and one manuscript could supplement another. This attitude towards quality and age culminated in Italy in the fifteenth century. The poet Petrarch was a pioneer in such matters as in so many other things, but more important were the travels of the scholar Poggio Bracciolini in France, Germany and England, where he searched for manuscripts in convents and churches. Works from Greek and Roman antiquity came to light that were previously unknown as well as new and better manuscripts of works that were already known and appreciated. Poggio even wanted to send men in search for manuscripts to Denmark.

The greatest collection of all was put together by Lorenzo di Medici in Florence, who died in the year 1494. He sent men to search in Greece, Constantinople, and southern Italy. He did not use the manuscript himself, but his collection was open to scholars and because of that there was great progress in Classical studies in Italy. Angelo Poliziano was the most important scholar among Italian humanists and realized that the majority of manuscripts could not be trusted. Rather, scholars should assess their age and other characteristics. Manuscripts that were all derived from a single and preserved exemplar were useless. Old manuscripts were more likely to be important than young manuscripts, but there was always the possibility that a young manuscript was copied from an old and venerable one that now was lost. Then they could be used. Before Poliziano, scholars used whatever manuscripts they had, but he criticized that and claimed the necessity of getting as close to the original manuscript as possible, often an impossible task and always arduous.

In the seventeenth century scholars in Europe chased manuscripts, but the field of interest was no longer limited to Greek and Roman antiquity and spread throughout the whole of Europe, focussing on the Middle Ages. In Iceland, the interest in the old national literature increased greatly in the first decades of the seventeenth century and learned men in Denmark started studying Icelandic medieval culture with the aid of Icelandic students at the University. This led to the search for medieval vellum manuscripts. Most of them belonged to rich and powerful families in Iceland that regarded them as family treasures, valuable items rather than objects to be investigated and copied for purposes of research. As Magnús Ólafsson wrote to the Danish scholar Ole Worm in 1632, lay people in Iceland who had manuscripts sat on them like dragons on gold. But when both bishops showed interest and wanted to have the manuscripts, the owner let go of them for money or goodwill. The first really successful and ambitious collector of Icelandic manuscripts was Brynjólfur Sveinsson, who became bishop in Skálholt in 1639. He had a special gift for discovering important manuscripts and the persuasive power to make the owners part with them. He knew better than most men in Iceland at that time that vellum manuscripts ought to be the foundation of research and editions. He wanted to have the most important texts printed, but was not allowed to build his own printing press, due to opposition from the other bishop, Þorlákur Skúlason, who had one and wanted to retain the monopoly.

In 1656, Bishop Brynjólfur presented King Frederik III, king of Denmark, with some extremely important manuscripts, hoping that he would have the texts published. These manuscripts were the famous Flateyjarbók, the law-codex Grágás, and Völsunga saga. Six years later the king sent the Icelander Þormóður Torfason to Iceland and Bishop Brynjólfur handed him the famous codex of the Poetic Edda, another of the Prose Edda, and an incomplete vellum of Njáls saga. Simultaneously with the discovery of manuscripts, there was a rush to transcribe them so more than one person could study the texts or just read them. Bishop Brynjólfur hired the priest Jón Erlendsson in Villingaholt to copy thousands and thousands of pages. Bishop Þorlákur had a score of scribes at Hólar and in the vicinity. There was a school of scribes in the Vestfjords and another one in the Dalasýsla. This led to the dissemination of medieval Icelandic texts and the revival of the saga heritage, although strictly limited to the educated classes and rich farmers.

III.

Without manuscripts there can be no research into the history and literature of past ages. The texts, however, have to be accessible or made accessible so scholars can use them in their work and prepare editions for schools and the general public. The greatest problem in the seventeenth century was the fact that nobody really knew what texts there were and where the manuscripts were: no catalogues, insufficient bibliographies, and bad libraries, to name just a few problems.

After graduating from the cathedral school in Skálholt, Árni Magnússon went to Copenhagen, where he took a theological degree in 1685. He would probably have become a priest in Iceland had he not met the Royal Antiquarian Thomas Bartholin, who hired him as his assistant in the summer of 1684. The following months were spent among manuscripts of uneven quality and Árni took hundreds of excerpts from Icelandic sagas and kingsʼ sagas. He wrote these excerpts in big volumes and translated them into Latin right away. He worked systematically through Egils saga, Grettis saga, and other such, but also more adventurous stories like Þorsteins þáttur bæjarmagns and Göngu-Hrólfs saga, that were considered to be just as reliable. Very early on, therefore, Árni had remarkable knowledge of Icelandic literature from the Middle Ages. His method of transcription was traditional, which means not very good. He used his own orthography and used whatever manuscripts that were at hand, most of them quite recent and of varying quality. That did not matter, however, since the primary purpose was to get information on culture and history and not to attain a good or correct text.

Thomas Bartholin read some Icelandic, it seems, but did not know much about Icelandic medieval literature. He had faint ideas, however, that there were manuscripts in Iceland that could be obtained and should be brought to Copenhagen. His predecessor, the Icelander Hannes Þorleifsson, had perished with the ship he sailed on from Iceland in 1682 and nobody knows how many manuscripts disappeared with him. A year later it was known that Jón Eggertsson had brought numerous Icelandic manuscripts to Sweden. The rivalry between the Swedes and the Danes was very strong in these years, both of them claiming more ancient origins and more glorious past, both using Icelandic texts to support their point of view. Bartholinʼs first step was to ask for a Danish monopoly on the collecting of manuscripts in Iceland. He wrote to the king on April 4, 1685 that since it is known that our neighbours have obtained from Iceland a great many beautiful manuscripts which they issue in print thereby causing us the greatest detriment, I beseech most humbly your Royal Majesty that you command your treasurer in Iceland, Christofer Heidemann, that he shall not only forbid and see to that no written histories or documents be sold out of the country to foreigners, but also that he collect all manuscripts that he can get hold of and send them to Copenhagen. Bartholin also pointed out that one of his tasks was to publish Icelandic sagas and had for that purpose hired Icelandic students. One of them would be sent to Iceland in order to collect manuscripts and documents. That was Árni Magnússon, and since the king accepted everything Bartholin said, the two of them, Árni and Heidemann, went to Iceland in the spring of 1685 with the explicit aim of collecting manuscripts.

Árni promised Bartholin that he would return in the fall, but just before departure there was a storm and the ship was destroyed in the harbour. It was too late to find another ship, so Árni spent the winter with his family in Hvammur í Hvammsfirði, in the western part of the country. Bartholin got to know this by the end of the year, and in a letter to Þormóður Torfason in January he explained that Árni would not arrive until the summer and promised to let him know what had been found. Bartholinʼs optimism proved to be mistaken. When Árni finally came to Copenhagen in Fall 1686, he hardly brought anything of interest, only poor manuscripts of the Poetic Edda, Grágás, and Áns saga bogsveigs. That was not much in one and a half year! What had happened? Wasnʼt Árni serious? It is clear that his master was very disappointed, but on the other hand, what could be expected? Árni was not rich enough to travel around the country and he was too young to have the connections necessary for success such as he had later in life. He went to the Althing at Þingvellir both summers, but the rest of his time he spent at home.

In the vicinity of Hvammur he knew people, and his family was well-known and respected. That was not enough, however, and Árni did not get anything remarkable for Bartholin. He collected some manuscripts for his own account, however, mostly works that Bartholin was not interested in—or maybe he just did not tell him about them. On his journey to Iceland, Árni got hold of three manuscripts of the lawbook Jónsbók from the fourteenth century, the so-called Ljárskógabók (AM 344 fol.), Staðarfellsbók (AM 346 fol.), and Belgsdalsbók (AM 347 fol.). He received them all from families close to Hvammur, from friends of his grandparents, and his cousin Páll Ketilsson, priest in Hvammur. This was Árniʼs first real contact with vellum manuscripts and judging from the incredible progress in his working methods in the next few years, one suspects that he had a kind of revelation and was filled with respect and at the same time a desire to get more, either by buying real manuscripts or by making copies. And since he now was assistant to the Royal Antiquarian, the family gave him manuscripts written by his maternal grandfather Ketill Jörundsson, one of the most important scribes in Iceland. He received at least Gísla saga Súrssonar (AM 481 4to), Harðar saga og Hólmverja (AM 499 4to), Kjalnesinga saga (AM 504 4to), Flóamanna saga (AM 516 4to), Bandamanna saga (AM 554 a b 4to), Hænsna-Þóris saga (AM 554 a d 4to), and Hávarðar saga Ísfirðings (AM 502 4to).

IV.

The canonical text of no less than five Icelandic sagas is largely based on the no longer extant manuscript known as Vatnshyrna. The sagas are Laxdæla saga, Eyrbyggja saga, Vatnsdæla saga, Hænsa-Þóris saga, and the shorter version of Flóamanna saga, all preserved in seventeenth-century transcripts of uneven quality. Vatnshyrna also contained, at least, Stjörnu Odda draumur and Kjalnesinga saga. The manuscript was produced in the last decade of the fourteenth century, a few years after Flateyjarbók. It was brought to Copenhagen by Árni Hákonarson from the farm Vatnshorn in Dalasýsla, who sold it to Professor Peder Resen in the spring of 1686. The Resenian Codex, later called Vatnshornsbók by Árni Magnússon, ended up in the Copenhagen University Library and was lost in the great fire of 1728. Árni had access to Vatnshyrna in Copenhagen. In fall 1686 he copied Stjörnu Odda draumur (AM 555 h 4to) and other draumþættir (AM 564 c 4to) and together with Ásgeir Jónsson, an Icelandic student, he copied Eyrbyggja (AM 448 4to). Ásgeir alone copied Vatnsdæla (AM 559 4to), Laxdæla saga (ÍB 225 4to), Kjalnesinga saga (AM 503 4to), and Flóamanna saga (AM 517 4to). It is not easy to judge the quality of these transcripts, since the original is gone, but it seems that Árni wanted them to be extremely accurate: every letter was to be there and every abbreviation. Ásgeir was not as meticulous, but Árni accepted his work and did not correct it.

In order to elucidate Árniʼs ideas on the transcription of old text, it has to be added that Ásgeir really (and unfortunately) did not copy Kjalnesinga saga, Flóamanna saga, and Hænsa-Þóris saga from Vatnshyrna itself, but copied paper-manuscripts with these three sagas that Árni had just acquired in Iceland and were written by Ketill Jörundsson, Árniʼs grandfather. My suggestion is, that when Árni and Ásgeir started working on Vatnshyrna, Ketillʼs manuscripts of these sagas proved to be fairly similar to the texts in Vatnshyrna. Rather than having Ásgeir copy the sagas from the manuscript, Árni decided to undertake a collation of Ketillʼs copies and Vatnshyrna, a common procedure among scholars in the period. Árni made systematic changes in Ketillʼs orthography, adjusting it to the norm of Vatnshyrna, and, in all likelihood, introducing some emendations of his own at the same time. It remains a mystery, however, why he only finished Flóamanna saga and went through no more than ten pages of the other two sagas. He then had Ásgeir make Vatnshyrna-like clean copies of each of them. By doing this they saved some time, because other vellum manuscripts in Copenhagen clamoured for their attention and Árni wanted more and more texts to be in his private library.

At this point Árni was also working for Bartholin, who was writing the history of the Danish church. A great deal of his time was spent with the copying of manuscripts and documents in public and private libraries and archives in Copenhagen, particularly those belonging to the university library. He did not work alone, however, but directed a group of Icelandic students, and together they copied thousands of pages for Bartholinʼs great, but never finished, project. Despite the workload, Árni did not abandon his own project of getting together his countryʼs saga heritage. Having finished Vatnshyrna, he decided to work on the saga collection Möðruvallabók from the fourteenth century, the most prominent manuscript containing family sagas. The manuscript was given to Bartholin in the summer of 1685 by an Icelandic bailiff who needed support in a political dispute. Bartholin could not care less and wrote that the manuscript only contained stuff that mattered for Icelandic history, except maybe Kormáks saga which said a lot about antiquities, which for Bartholin meant Danish history. Árni disagreed and borrowed the manuscript. He probably had good enough copies of some of the sagas already, such as Njáls saga, Laxdæla saga, Finnboga saga, and Bandamanna saga, for he did not make copies of them. Ásgeir Jónsson, however, copied Ölkofra þátt and Droplaugarsona saga, but together they copied Kormáks saga, Vígaglúms saga, and Fóstbræðra saga. Eyjólfur Björnsson, another Icelandic student, wrote Egils saga and Hallfreðar saga. The method was not the same as when they worked on Vatnshyrna and Árni had by now devised a system of normalization of orthography, which meant less work for the three of them. Writing as accurately as he had done in the beginning is extremely consuming and there were, again, so many things left to do. The project of copying Möðruvallabók took place in the year 1688 and three years later, after Bartholinʼs death, Árni acquired the manuscript.

By 1690, not even thirty years old, Árni possessed good copies of all the family sagas. Considering the conditions, this was a feat. He did not stop, however, and for the rest of his life he relentlessly chased manuscripts, writing from Copenhagen to dozens of people in Iceland, asking them to let him know and send him whatever they found in churches, farms, or wherever. In 1696 he bragged that he had all important Icelandic works in his collection and three years later he stated that he had the best collection of Icelandic manuscripts in the world. When he was in Iceland in the years 1702–1712 he corresponded with and talked to hundreds of people, always asking the same questions. Most of the vellum manuscripts had by that time been brought out of the country, but he knew that there were many old manuscripts left in fragmentary and dispersed states. He gradually got many of those together from different persons and different parts of the country, showing remarkable patience and perseverance, the equal of which had not been previously seen. He virtually scoured the country so that there was not much left when he went back to Copenhagen in 1712. No piece of vellum or paper was neglected. What he could not buy, he hired good scribes to copy with great accuracy and vigilance, for instance thousands of original documents that were too important to their owners to part with. Or as he wrote himself to the king in 1721: On my journeys to Iceland there came to me, time and again, many old books, including a number of illegible letters and other such things, which I, where the owners did not object thereto, have acquired for payment. The remainder, which the owners either would not or could not give up, I have copied, solely to the end that such materials should be saved from destruction, since most in that country care now not greatly for such things.

After Árni settled in Copenhagen again, he bought manuscripts at auctions, and when Þormóður Torfason died in 1719, he acquired his collection of manuscripts. Once in a while he got packets from Iceland, for instance one with thirty-three vellum leaves from his nephew Snorri Jónsson in 1721. The collection continued growing and Árni nurtured hopes that he would manage to make a catalogue before he died. In the evening of October 20, 1728, however, a fire broke out in Copenhagen. It raged for three days and destroyed at least one-third of the city. Árni waited too long and did not order the removal of his belongings until it was almost too late. Only the manuscripts were saved, most of them that is, because we know that at least a few dozen were lost. Almost all his printed books and many of his erudite notes and papers became the victims of fire, burning to ashes in half an hour. The same fire destroyed the Copenhagen University Library with many valuable Icelandic and Norwegian vellum manuscripts. This was a terrible blow to Árni and he died fourteen months later, on January 7, 1730, having bequeathed his collection to the University of Copenhagen the day before. In his will he provided a grant, sufficient for one or two scholarships in the field of Icelandic history and literature; there are now more than twenty people working in the two institutes that carry his name, preserving the manuscripts and keeping the saga heritage alive, just as he would have wanted.

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