Fäderneslandets antikviteter. The export of islandica in the 17th century
Árni Magnússon's huge job as a systematic collector of Icelandic manuscripts is well known. But how did he come to do this? Who were his precedessors? For he did not just get the idea to do this work all by himself. It has to be identified as the climax of some kind of tradition in collecting l...
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| Format: | Conference Object |
| Language: | English |
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Universität Tübingen
2004
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10900/46215 http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:21-opus-10779 |
| Summary: | Árni Magnússon's huge job as a systematic collector of Icelandic manuscripts is well known. But how did he come to do this? Who were his precedessors? For he did not just get the idea to do this work all by himself. It has to be identified as the climax of some kind of tradition in collecting literary material in and on Iceland and in transporting it to continental Scandinavia. How did these activities start? Who were those outside Iceland who were interested in Old Icelandic texts? It was historians and book collectors of the late 16th and the 17th centuries, who first became aware of the existence of Old Icelandic sagas and poetry through the Latin works of Argrímur laerdi on Iceland (eg "Crymogaea"), and later through Bishop Brynjólfur Sveinsson who employed a number of scribes to copy the old material for scientists in Denmark and who also donated some of the most splendid codices to them and the Danish king. As the Icelandic sagas were thought to contain information on the heroic past of the Northern people, the scientific interest mingled with the political wish to prove Denmark's (and later also Sweden's) high level of civilization ever since the old times. The historians' aim was to show that the Scandinavian past was at least as heroic as the Romans' and the Greeks'. Besides, the use of the sagas as historical sources the Scandinavian scientists could also refer to the very advanced level of Old Icelandic poetry to support the thought of Nordic superiority.Against this backdrop, strong efforts were made during the 17th centrury to increase the Icelandic material, in order to exploit it in Continental Scandinavia. Since, at this time, Iceland belonged to Denmark, and since Denmark was, during long periods in the 17th century, an enemy of Sweden, the Danish historians didn't want the Swedes to get hold of Icelandic sagas; they got a royal decree according to which it was forbidden to export Icelandic "antiquities", as they were called then, to countries other than Denmark. Still, some cunning Icelanders ... |
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