CHAPTER III.
The Wineland History of the Flatey Book.
The Flatey Book [Flateyjarbók] is the most extensive and most perfect of Icelandic manuscripts. It is in itself a comprehensive historical library of the era with which it deals, and so considerable are its contents, that they fill upwards of 1700 large octavo pages of printed text[1]. On the title-page of the manuscript[2] we are informed, that it belonged originally to John Haconsson [Jon Hákonarson], for whom it was written by the priests John Thordsson [Jon Þóri^arson] and Magnus Thorhallsson [Magnus Þórhallsson]. We have no information concerning the date when the book was commenced by John Thordsson; but the most important portion of the work appears to have been completed in the year 1387[3], although additions were made to the body of the work by one of the original scribes[4], and the annals, appended to the book, brought down to the year 1394. Toward the close of the fifteenth century, the then owner of the book, whose name is unknown, inserted three quaternions of additional historical matter in the manuscript[5], to fill a hiatus in the historical sequence of the work, not, however, in that part of the manuscript which treats of Wineland.
It has been conjectured that the manuscript was written in the north of Iceland[6],
- ↑ 'Five pages or ten columns of it fill twenty-eight printed pages.' Vigfusson, Preface to the Rolls Ed. 'Icelandic Sagas,' London, 1887, vol. i. p. xxvii.
- ↑ 'The only title-page found in any Icelandic MS.' Ibid. p. xxv.
- ↑ Cf. Storm, Islandske Annaler, Christiania, 1888, pp. xxxiv-xxxvi. This view, however, conflicts with the opinion held by others that this date should be 1380. Cf. Flateyjarbók, ed. Vigfusson and Unger, Christiania, 1860-68, vol. iii, Fortale, i-iii; Finnur Jónsson, Eddalieder, Halle, o. S., 1888, i. p. viii.
- ↑ Magnus Thorhallsson.
- ↑ Cf. Preface, Icelandic Sagas, ubi sup. vol. i. p. xxx.
- ↑ 'Annales non in occidentali Islandia, sed potius aut Vididalstungae aut in monasterio Thingeyrensi [qui uterque locus in septentrionali Islandia situs est] scripti esse videntur.' Islenzkir Annálar, Copenh. 1847, p. xv. This opinion is partially sanctioned by Storm, who suggests that Magnus' predecessor probably had his home in the north of Iceland. Cf. Storm, Islandske Annaler, Christiania, 1888, p. xxxiv.
