Note 8 — Chapter VI

The only remarkabilities are the Bibles and the manuscripts. Among the first we find the large folio Biblia of 1584—the first entire work—translated from the German version of Martin Luther by Guðbrand Thorlaksson, Bishop of Hólar, and there printed. This admirable work, which rivals our “established version,” is not divided into verses, and is chiefly curious because the mechanical dignitary, who in 1574 imported new types, made his own capitals, plates, and woodcuts. He was assisted by the Icelander Jón Jónsson, and preceded by John Mathieson, a Swede, who brought the first printing press about 1520, and who published the “Breviarium Nidarosiense” in 1521; an ecclesiastical handbook, Luther’s Catechism, and others of the same kind. These works, especially the Breviarium, are so rare as to be practically unprocurable. According to my informants, no “Elucidarius” has ever been published in Iceland. The Rev. Thorwaldr Bjarnason assured me that the oldest Icelandic manuscript is one of these catechisms, translated, as they all were, from Latin, and dating from the thirteenth century. The second Biblia (1644), after the Danish version of Bishop Resinius, is the work of Bishop Thorlak Skurlason of Hólar, who divided it into verses. The type is black letter, ultra-Gothic Gothic, and the two folios are in the best condition. There is a copy of the New Testament (1540, Henderson, ii. 265) translated by Oddr Gottskálksson, with the distinguishing mark (G. T. and cross), a large and thick duodecimo, with the beginning and the end restored by manuscript—Icelanders, as a rule, are very skilful in supplying lost pages. Of this book only three copies are known, the two others are at the deanery of Hruni and in Glasgow. Another New Testament (1609), reprinted at Hólar by Bishop Guðbrand, whose high-nosed and fork-bearded face remind us of his kinsman Rustam in far Iran, is a small stout octavo, with an old binding and metal clasps.