Arnas Magnæus Philologus (1663-1730) by Már Jónsson (review)

'I would rather spend my time reading an old book' (p. 119). Parergon readers will undoubtedly relate to this comment by Árni Magnússon, the Icelandic scholar and great collector of Old Icelandic manuscripts who is the subject of Már Jónsson's beautifully written book. We surely owe the survival of the better part of the extant collection of medieval Icelandic manuscripts to Árni; his collection forms the basis for those of the twin manuscript institutes in Reykjavík and Copenhagen that now bear his name. This book is part biography (Már's Icelandic-language biography of Árni was published in 1998), part meticulously researched history of how that collection came about. 'Detailed knowledge of the preservation of medieval texts is necessary for their understanding and interpretation', argues Már in his statement of aims (p. 10). This book offers that contextual information in a convenient and very readable format.

The book is arranged chronologically with each chapter, following the introductory one, covering a different period of Árni's life. Each chapter is nicely presented, headed by a quotation from Árni or one of his fellow scholars, and prefaced by a concise and convenient abstract. Chapter 1 also contains a very useful table showing numbers of extant Icelandic manuscripts and charters, divided into categories of vellum and paper, by century between 1101 and 1600 (p. 11), and another concerning Icelandic vellums according to the number of extant leaves for the same period (p. 13). As Már notes, 'it is indeed striking that among preserved manuscripts there are very few cases where we have a vellum and its direct copy' (p. 11). There are fifteen black and white figures arranged throughout the book, many illustrating Árni's 'impressive notes' (p. 118) in his clear, neat handwriting.

Már describes his subject as an 'enchanting man' (p. 21), and Árni is brought to captivating life through spirited quotations from his correspondence (Már also draws on Árni's notes, working papers, and transcriptions; the recorded observations of contemporary scholars; and, with reservations, two eighteenth-century biographies). 'I have so much to do, and almost all of it worthless, that I am sick of myself ' (p. 105), is another of Árni's pronouncements we may perhaps feel some scholarly sympathy for! We learn of his friend, fellow scholar, and fellow Icelander Þormóður Torfason, who asks Árni to check whether his deerskin underpants have been found in the guest-house in which he stayed while visiting Árni in Copenhagen, and of Árni's later years, during which colleagues mischievously suspected he 'sat at home gnawing on his old vellums' (p. 188). Details like this, liberally sprinkled throughout, enliven this meticulously researched account of Árni's life and scholarly activities.

In charting Árni's career, the book also provides an account of the beginnings of the scholarly study of Old Norse philology and the foundations of the discipline today. Árni lamented the common practice of destroying or recycling (often as binding for other books) old manuscripts which were no longer seen as useful, given that more modern copies or printed versions of the text in question had been produced. He also advocated the practice of making diplomatic or 'semi-normalised' (with expanded abbreviations) copies of older texts, rather than modernising them to the orthography and language of the scribe (p. 80). During his scholarly career, he developed a 'moderately sceptical' (p. 94) attitude and a critical approach to sources and argument that was cutting-edge, and controversial, in contemporary scholarship but is fundamental today: weighing all the evidence and considering the nature of each source rather than accepting it uncritically. The aforementioned Þormóður compared Árni favourably to the celebrated medieval scholars Sæmundr fróði (the wise) and Snorri Sturluson (p. 81). Yet Árni is not uncritically sanctified by his biographer: we see both sides of the...