Í spor Jóns lærða ed. by Hjörleifur Guttormsson (review)

Jón Guðmundsson the Learned (1574–1658) was the author of works of natural history and of poems with which he successfully exorcized ghosts. He spoke up against the local authorities who had slaughtered Basque fishermen, was tried for sorcery, and ended his life in exile in Eastern Iceland. He was not only an important scribe and informant for Bishop Brynjólfur Sveinsson of Skálholt regarding medieval Icelandic beliefs and texts, but also a skilled painter and carver of wood and (walrus) ivory. The volume under review is a celebration of his life, accomplishments, and influence. It comprises twenty-two articles treating not only Jón’s life, the places he lived, his beliefs, and his writings but also literature loosely based on his colorful career. The volume contains extracts from writings by and stories about Jón, including a tale printed here for the first time (“Jón lærði í Bjarnarey,” pp. 260–61). An Icelandic work about an Icelander of Jón’s fame would not be complete without a genealogy: a list of his descendants in Eastern Iceland is found on pages 283–314.

To list the authors and titles of each article would exhaust the space available for this review; suffice it to say that the topics discussed are all treated by experts on those areas, and that readers interested in the natural history, literature, art, music, folklore, and intellectual culture (including belief in witchdraft and elves) of seventeenth-century Iceland will all find material to enjoy. Of particular interest to this reviewer are the articles on the churches at Hjaltastaður (where Jón spent the last years of his life), which include a scholarly detective story tracing two statues of the Virgin Mary from seventeenth-century visitation records to the National Museum of Iceland. The history of the church itself is brought up to the present, with a list of graves in the churchyard.

Thanks to a grant from the Icelandic Literature Center, the volume contains numerous illustrations, including reproductions of manuscript pages, objects attributed to Jón, breathtaking arial photographs of the locations discussed, the occasional plan of archeological remains, and numerous high-quality maps; the map of Western Iceland on p. 5 will be particularly useful for those unfamiliar with Icelandic geography. The authors of the articles are also represented. Last but not least, the volume is accompanied by a disk that includes a program first aired on Icelandic radio in which Berglind Häsler tells the story of Jón’s life, interspersed with interviews with Einar G. Pétursson and Hjörleifur Guttormsson; music and folksongs (the musicians, Sigursveinn Magnússon and Sigrún Valgerður Gestsdóttir, can be seen on p. 218); recitation of some of Jón’s poetry by Sævar Sigbjarnarson; an extract from a lecture by Sjón about his novel, Rökkurbýsnir (From the Mouth of the Whale); and selections from the play Sönn frásaga by Ásdís Thoroddsen. If the text were made available (on the Internet, perhaps?), the disk could serve as a useful pedagogical tool illustrating modern Icelandic speech as produced by a variety of individuals. As it is, the verses recited in track 3 can be found on p. 248, those recited in track 8 and sung in track 9 on p. 246; the chapter and recording of Sjón also overlap. The disk is a wonderful complement to the book and provides an excellent introduction to it.

By the nature of the volume, there is a certain amount of repetition among the articles. I could have wished that, instead of extracts of so many of Jón’s poems, more unpublished work could have been printed. For example, 34 of 62 verses, just over half, of an unprinted poem, Gamla taskan, fill under two pages. Completing that poem would have been more useful than...