SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

ARNI MAGNUSSON
By EIRfKUR BENEDIKZ
TH IS year is the tercentenary of the birth of Ami
Magnusson or Arnas Magna-us as his contemporaries
usually called him. In view of the debt all students of
Old Icelandic and Old Norse owe to the Arna-Magnsean
Collection it would seem not unbefitting that the Saga-Book
should mark the occasion in a small way.
Ami Magnusson was born on the r jth of November
1663 in Dalasysla in Iceland. He was brought up by his
grandparents in Hvammur and later by an uncle. Pall
Ketilsson, who prepared Ami for the Cathedral School at
Skalholt which he entered at the age of 17 and left three
years later.
In 1683 Ami went to the University of Copenhagen and
became attestatus theologize after two years' study.
Soon after his arrival at the University Ami had the
good fortune to come to th e notice of Professor Thomas
Bartholin, the learned antiquary and royal historiographer,
who was looking for an assistant who knew Icelandic.
He tested Ami's knowledge and was much impressed by
his learning and the ease with which he translated and
commented on difficult passages both of poetry anel prose.
He engaged Ami without any further question and the
latter remained Bartholin's amanuensis until his death in
r690.
During these years Ami rendered invaluable assistance
to Bartholin, both in the preparation of the work
Antiquitates danicce, which appeared in 1689, and by
contributing about 3,000 foolscap pages of transcriptions,
translations and commentaries on Icelandic source
material to the so-called tomi Bartholiniani which are now
preserved in the University Library.
It may be safely assumed that it was Bartholin who
started Ami on his career as a collector of manuscripts.