Books by Gottskálk Jensson
Þeófrastos: Manngerðir, 2007
Hann fil.'r lp.llan koss fra elskunni sinrn og pa verOur honum aO or(h: Mir /uetti gaman aJ vita ... more Hann fil.'r lp.llan koss fra elskunni sinrn og pa verOur honum aO or(h: Mir /uetti gaman aJ vita hvort jJJi elskn-mig Ilka svona mikiO f hjarta jJfn11. Hann finnur peningapung a gOtu og andvarpar• Ald r er Jinn ig fjdrs;6iJ .' Hann er nYbl.linn aO kaupa set pril.'l a g60u verOi eftir mikiO pjark vi8 kaupmanninn, pa heyrisr hann rauta: Eg efast 11m 11/J ig haft keypt nokk110 af v1t1 fym svo liuiJ verd. •• 978-9979-66-201-3
Um kveðskap á þjóðtungu / De vulgari eloquentia, 2008
Íslensk þýðing úr latínu á hluta hinnar miklu Noregssögu Þormóðs Torfasonar (Historia rerum Norve... more Íslensk þýðing úr latínu á hluta hinnar miklu Noregssögu Þormóðs Torfasonar (Historia rerum Norvegicarum, Kaupmannahöfn 1711) ásamt eftirmála þýðanda. Ritið var gjöf norska Stórþingsins til Alþingis Íslendinga í tilefni fullveldisársins 2018. Prentað í örfáum eintökum í prentsmiðju Stórþingsins.
""While nineteenth-century scholars debated whether the fragmentary Satyrica of Petronius should ... more ""While nineteenth-century scholars debated whether the fragmentary Satyrica of Petronius should be regarded as a traditional or an original work in ancient literary history, twentieth-century Petronian scholarship tended to take for granted that the author was a unique innovator and his work a synthetic composition with respect to genre. The consequence of this was an excessive emphasis on authorial intention as well as a focus on parts of the text taken out of the larger context, which has increased the already severe state of fragmentation in which today’s reader finds the Satyrica.
The present study offers a reading of the Satyrica as the mimetic performance of its fictional auctor Encolpius; as an ancient “road novel” told from memory by a Greek exile who relates how on his travels through Italy he had dealings with people who told stories, gave speeches, recited poetry and made other statements, which he then weaves into his own story and retells through the performance technique of vocal impersonation. The result is a skillfully made narrative fabric, a travelogue carried by a desultory narrative voice that switches identity from time to time to deliver discursively varied and often longish statements in the personae of encountered characters.
This study also makes a renewed effort to reconstruct the story told in the Satyrica and to explain how it relates to the identity and origin of its fictional auctor, a poor young scholar who volunteered to act the scapegoat in his Greek home city, Massalia (ancient Marseille), and was driven into exile in a bizarre archaic ritual. Besides relating his erotic suffering on account of his love for the beautiful boy Giton, Encolpius intertwines the various discourses and character statements of his narrative into a subtle brand of satire and social criticism (e.g. a critique of ancient capitalism) in the style of Cynic popular philosophy.
Finally, it is argued that Petronius’ Satyrica is a Roman remake of a lost Greek text of the same title and belongs—together with Apuleius’ Metamorphoses—to the oldest type of Greco-Roman novel, known to antiquity as Milesian fiction.
""
Papers by Gottskálk Jensson
Gripla 35, 2024
In his edition of Postola sögur (Christiania 1874), the prolific Norwegian editor of Icelandic sa... more In his edition of Postola sögur (Christiania 1874), the prolific Norwegian editor of Icelandic sagas Carl Richard Unger (1817–1897) created four similar editorial headings to combine as many pairs of Old Icelandic translations from Latin of the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles: Tveggia postola saga Petrs ok Pals, Tveggia postola saga Jons ok Jacobs, Tveggia postola saga Philippus og Jacobs, and Tveggia postola saga Simonis ok Jude. In his introduction, Unger notes that all headings printed in capital letters are his own inventions, while italicized headings are attested in the manuscripts on which the edition is based. The four headings mentioned above are consistently printed in capital letters. The author of this article examines the status of these titles in more detail, confirming that, as Unger indicated, these editorial headings are never attested in manuscripts but were invented specifically for this edition, likely based on the analogy of the feast-day name ‘Tveggja postola messa,’ which refers to May 1, honoring the apostles Philippus and Jacobus. The article further argues that the widespread adoption of these titles by modern scholars is likely due to Kristian Kålund, the author of the manuscript catalogue of the Arnamagnæan Collection, who incorporated Unger’s editorial headings without explanation and used them as titles when listing the contents of manuscripts.
Ritmennt. Ársrit Landsbókasafns íslands - Háskólabókasafns, 2000
Í formála að íslenskri bókmenntasögu Hálfdanar Einarssonar á latínu, Sciagraphia historiæ literar... more Í formála að íslenskri bókmenntasögu Hálfdanar Einarssonar á latínu, Sciagraphia historiæ literariæ Islandicæ (Kaupmannahöfn 1777), segist höfundur skulda „ekki ekkert" (nonnulla á latínu) íslensku skálda- og rithöfundatali á 16. og 17. öld eftir Pál Vídalín. Rit þetta var samið á latínu um 1700 undir titlinum Recensus Poetarum et Scriptorum Islandorum huius et superioris seculi. Upprunalega handritið virðist glatað en til er útdráttur þess (JS 569 4to) með hendi Hálfdanar Einarssonar og laus-
leg þýðing í tveimur útgáfum (MS Bor. 66 og JS 30 4to) eftir sr. Þorstein Pétursson á Staðarbakka. Þessa tvo texta hefur Jón Samsonarson búið til prentunar. í greininni er skoðað hvernig Hálfdan fjallar um Pál í bókmenntasögunni og hversu mikið efni hann notar úr skáldatali hans og þá hvernig. Einnig er leitað vísbendinga um hvort Hálfdan hafi notað eigin útdrátt ritsins eða hið glataða handrit sjálft við samningu bókmenntasögunnar. Markmiðið er að draga upp dálítið gleggri mynd af sambandi og sérkcnnum þessara tveggja merkustu bólcmenntasögurita frá 18. öld.
Árbók Fornleifafélagsins, 2024
Latin inscriptions from the excavation at Þingeyrar
In 2022, archologists found two corroded copp... more Latin inscriptions from the excavation at Þingeyrar
In 2022, archologists found two corroded copper shields (2022-6-66 and 2022-6-65) at the site of Þingeyrar Cloister in the North of Iceland. The excavation is part of the RANNÍS-funded project „Between Man and Nature. The Making of Benedictine Communities in Medieval Iceland“, directed by Professor Steinunn Kristjánsdóttir at the University of Iceland. The shields were discovered among coffin remains in grave 15, a burial believed to have been located in the floor of the medieval and early-modern wooden churches, which stood about 150 m south of the modern church. X-ray-images revealed a Latin text on one of the shields with a partly illegible memorial inscription for Bjarni Halldórsson (d. 1773), a
well-known magistrate in the area and repesentative of the Danish Crown at Þingeyrar, who was thus identified as the owner of grave 15. The author of the article reconstructs the Latin text of the heavily damaged inscription, based on the x-ray-image and a printed document from 1777, showing a representation of a closely related Latin inscription on the tombstone of the same magistrate, which was imported from Denmark by his relatives but never placed on the grave. The article also refutes as unfounded an anecdote told of a mishap during the magistrate’s burial, which if true would have indicated that he was not buried inside the church but outside it in the surrounding graveyard. Finally, two other funeral inscriptions in Latin, which are preserved at the National Museum of Iceland and are contemporary with the newly discovered inscription are transcribed and translated for comparison.
Modern Literary Theory and the Ancient Novel: Poetics and Rhetoric. Ancient Narrative Supplementum 30, 2023
This paper builds on and continues my earlier discussion of performative stage directions in Petr... more This paper builds on and continues my earlier discussion of performative stage directions in Petronius’ Satyrica. The aim here is to look more closely at the qualifications of the many character statements in this text and to attempt a description of the riotous vocal interchange that a performance of the work would require. From investigating the inquits of the Satyrica, I argue that the frequent references made by the narrator Encolpius to the gesticulation and clamorous voices of subordinate diegetic personae, impersonated by him, must in principle also determine his own manner (or that of a vocal reader) of impersonating them, and, by inference, project an ideal recitational style for this text. By thus empha- sizing the performative aspect of the Satyrica, which I have described as ‘desultory’ because of the frequent alterations not only in discourse type but also in voice (i.e. impersonated personae), I wish to show that the impression of vocal caprice that one gets from reading or listening to this text nevertheless does not subvert the form of the classic recollection narrative and turn the Satyrica into a dramatic piece, merely tests the limits of a single voice performance.
Religions 14: 862, 2023
The monastic archives of Iceland have rarely been made the subject of specific studies. This arti... more The monastic archives of Iceland have rarely been made the subject of specific studies. This article is intended to survey the history of one such archive, belonging to the Benedictine Abbey of Þingeyrar in Northern Iceland, which was founded 1133 and dissolved 1551. Through its extraordinarily rich literary production this monastery left an indelible mark on the Northern- European cultural heritage. After the Reformation Þingeyrar Cloister remained a state-owned and ecclesiastical institution until modern times. Its archive, which is partly preserved to this day, is both the most extensive of its kind to survive in Iceland and uniquely remained in place for almost eight centuries, making it possibly the longest operated archive in the Nordic countries. The Icelanders may be better known for their sagas and mythological poetry, but their industrious literacy certainly extended to creating bureaucratic documents in accordance with the Roman tradition. French Benedictines were among the first in the world to turn the art of archival management into an academic discipline, and the Icelandic Professor Árni Magnússon (d. 1730), who is best known for his great collection of Old Icelandic manuscripts, was the first Nordic scholar to employ their methods effectively, which he used to investigate the Archive of Þingeyrar. Surveying the history of this Icelandic archive gives us insight into a constitutive science fundamental for our access to the past.
Dominican Resonances in Medieval Iceland The Legacy of Bishop Jón Halldórsson of Skálholt, 2021
Gripla XXXIII, 2022
Sources on the monastic church and library at Þingeyrar
The Benedictine Abbey of Þingeyrar in Nor... more Sources on the monastic church and library at Þingeyrar
The Benedictine Abbey of Þingeyrar in North-West Iceland was the earliest monastic house in Iceland, established in the early 12th century. Today, it is mainly famous for its literary production and for manuscripts, some of which are still preserved. All remnants of the monastic buildings have now vanished from the face of earth, but we have fairly precise descriptions of these buildings in official appraisals from 1684 and 1704, found in the Collection of the Procurators at the National Archives of Iceland. Further, current archeological research at Þingeyrar has added considerable new knowledge about Þingeyrar, e.g. the location of the monastic church. The appraisals of Þingeyrar Abbey can be compared to other known documents, medieval annals and charters, to construct a more complete picture of the monastic buildings and their interiors, primarily of the church where the monks had their library. This study forms an introduction to the first publication of the appraisals and it attempts to tell the history of the Church of Þingeyrar Abbey, which as it turns out seems to have survived more or less intact until 1695, when the Danish official Lauritz Gottrup had it torn down and a new one built.
Saints and their Legacies, 2021
Sainthood, Scriptoria, and Secular Erudition in Medieval and Early Modern Scandinavia. Essays in honour of Kirsten Wolf, 2022
Heimur skáldsögunnar, ritstj. Ástráður Eysteinsson, 2001
Heimur ljóðsins, ritstj. Ástráður Eysteinsson, Dagný Kirstjánsdóttir og Sveinn Yngvi Egilsson, 2005
Hallamál, rétt Haraldi Bernharðssyni fimmtugum, 2018
Saltari, stilltur og sleginn Svanhildi Óskarsdóttur fimmtugri, 2014
Þórðargleði, slegið upp fyrir Þórð Inga Guðjónsson fimmtugan, 2018
Margarítur, hristar Margréti Eggertsdóttur fimmtugri, 2010
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Books by Gottskálk Jensson
The present study offers a reading of the Satyrica as the mimetic performance of its fictional auctor Encolpius; as an ancient “road novel” told from memory by a Greek exile who relates how on his travels through Italy he had dealings with people who told stories, gave speeches, recited poetry and made other statements, which he then weaves into his own story and retells through the performance technique of vocal impersonation. The result is a skillfully made narrative fabric, a travelogue carried by a desultory narrative voice that switches identity from time to time to deliver discursively varied and often longish statements in the personae of encountered characters.
This study also makes a renewed effort to reconstruct the story told in the Satyrica and to explain how it relates to the identity and origin of its fictional auctor, a poor young scholar who volunteered to act the scapegoat in his Greek home city, Massalia (ancient Marseille), and was driven into exile in a bizarre archaic ritual. Besides relating his erotic suffering on account of his love for the beautiful boy Giton, Encolpius intertwines the various discourses and character statements of his narrative into a subtle brand of satire and social criticism (e.g. a critique of ancient capitalism) in the style of Cynic popular philosophy.
Finally, it is argued that Petronius’ Satyrica is a Roman remake of a lost Greek text of the same title and belongs—together with Apuleius’ Metamorphoses—to the oldest type of Greco-Roman novel, known to antiquity as Milesian fiction.
""
Papers by Gottskálk Jensson
leg þýðing í tveimur útgáfum (MS Bor. 66 og JS 30 4to) eftir sr. Þorstein Pétursson á Staðarbakka. Þessa tvo texta hefur Jón Samsonarson búið til prentunar. í greininni er skoðað hvernig Hálfdan fjallar um Pál í bókmenntasögunni og hversu mikið efni hann notar úr skáldatali hans og þá hvernig. Einnig er leitað vísbendinga um hvort Hálfdan hafi notað eigin útdrátt ritsins eða hið glataða handrit sjálft við samningu bókmenntasögunnar. Markmiðið er að draga upp dálítið gleggri mynd af sambandi og sérkcnnum þessara tveggja merkustu bólcmenntasögurita frá 18. öld.
In 2022, archologists found two corroded copper shields (2022-6-66 and 2022-6-65) at the site of Þingeyrar Cloister in the North of Iceland. The excavation is part of the RANNÍS-funded project „Between Man and Nature. The Making of Benedictine Communities in Medieval Iceland“, directed by Professor Steinunn Kristjánsdóttir at the University of Iceland. The shields were discovered among coffin remains in grave 15, a burial believed to have been located in the floor of the medieval and early-modern wooden churches, which stood about 150 m south of the modern church. X-ray-images revealed a Latin text on one of the shields with a partly illegible memorial inscription for Bjarni Halldórsson (d. 1773), a
well-known magistrate in the area and repesentative of the Danish Crown at Þingeyrar, who was thus identified as the owner of grave 15. The author of the article reconstructs the Latin text of the heavily damaged inscription, based on the x-ray-image and a printed document from 1777, showing a representation of a closely related Latin inscription on the tombstone of the same magistrate, which was imported from Denmark by his relatives but never placed on the grave. The article also refutes as unfounded an anecdote told of a mishap during the magistrate’s burial, which if true would have indicated that he was not buried inside the church but outside it in the surrounding graveyard. Finally, two other funeral inscriptions in Latin, which are preserved at the National Museum of Iceland and are contemporary with the newly discovered inscription are transcribed and translated for comparison.
The Benedictine Abbey of Þingeyrar in North-West Iceland was the earliest monastic house in Iceland, established in the early 12th century. Today, it is mainly famous for its literary production and for manuscripts, some of which are still preserved. All remnants of the monastic buildings have now vanished from the face of earth, but we have fairly precise descriptions of these buildings in official appraisals from 1684 and 1704, found in the Collection of the Procurators at the National Archives of Iceland. Further, current archeological research at Þingeyrar has added considerable new knowledge about Þingeyrar, e.g. the location of the monastic church. The appraisals of Þingeyrar Abbey can be compared to other known documents, medieval annals and charters, to construct a more complete picture of the monastic buildings and their interiors, primarily of the church where the monks had their library. This study forms an introduction to the first publication of the appraisals and it attempts to tell the history of the Church of Þingeyrar Abbey, which as it turns out seems to have survived more or less intact until 1695, when the Danish official Lauritz Gottrup had it torn down and a new one built.
The present study offers a reading of the Satyrica as the mimetic performance of its fictional auctor Encolpius; as an ancient “road novel” told from memory by a Greek exile who relates how on his travels through Italy he had dealings with people who told stories, gave speeches, recited poetry and made other statements, which he then weaves into his own story and retells through the performance technique of vocal impersonation. The result is a skillfully made narrative fabric, a travelogue carried by a desultory narrative voice that switches identity from time to time to deliver discursively varied and often longish statements in the personae of encountered characters.
This study also makes a renewed effort to reconstruct the story told in the Satyrica and to explain how it relates to the identity and origin of its fictional auctor, a poor young scholar who volunteered to act the scapegoat in his Greek home city, Massalia (ancient Marseille), and was driven into exile in a bizarre archaic ritual. Besides relating his erotic suffering on account of his love for the beautiful boy Giton, Encolpius intertwines the various discourses and character statements of his narrative into a subtle brand of satire and social criticism (e.g. a critique of ancient capitalism) in the style of Cynic popular philosophy.
Finally, it is argued that Petronius’ Satyrica is a Roman remake of a lost Greek text of the same title and belongs—together with Apuleius’ Metamorphoses—to the oldest type of Greco-Roman novel, known to antiquity as Milesian fiction.
""
leg þýðing í tveimur útgáfum (MS Bor. 66 og JS 30 4to) eftir sr. Þorstein Pétursson á Staðarbakka. Þessa tvo texta hefur Jón Samsonarson búið til prentunar. í greininni er skoðað hvernig Hálfdan fjallar um Pál í bókmenntasögunni og hversu mikið efni hann notar úr skáldatali hans og þá hvernig. Einnig er leitað vísbendinga um hvort Hálfdan hafi notað eigin útdrátt ritsins eða hið glataða handrit sjálft við samningu bókmenntasögunnar. Markmiðið er að draga upp dálítið gleggri mynd af sambandi og sérkcnnum þessara tveggja merkustu bólcmenntasögurita frá 18. öld.
In 2022, archologists found two corroded copper shields (2022-6-66 and 2022-6-65) at the site of Þingeyrar Cloister in the North of Iceland. The excavation is part of the RANNÍS-funded project „Between Man and Nature. The Making of Benedictine Communities in Medieval Iceland“, directed by Professor Steinunn Kristjánsdóttir at the University of Iceland. The shields were discovered among coffin remains in grave 15, a burial believed to have been located in the floor of the medieval and early-modern wooden churches, which stood about 150 m south of the modern church. X-ray-images revealed a Latin text on one of the shields with a partly illegible memorial inscription for Bjarni Halldórsson (d. 1773), a
well-known magistrate in the area and repesentative of the Danish Crown at Þingeyrar, who was thus identified as the owner of grave 15. The author of the article reconstructs the Latin text of the heavily damaged inscription, based on the x-ray-image and a printed document from 1777, showing a representation of a closely related Latin inscription on the tombstone of the same magistrate, which was imported from Denmark by his relatives but never placed on the grave. The article also refutes as unfounded an anecdote told of a mishap during the magistrate’s burial, which if true would have indicated that he was not buried inside the church but outside it in the surrounding graveyard. Finally, two other funeral inscriptions in Latin, which are preserved at the National Museum of Iceland and are contemporary with the newly discovered inscription are transcribed and translated for comparison.
The Benedictine Abbey of Þingeyrar in North-West Iceland was the earliest monastic house in Iceland, established in the early 12th century. Today, it is mainly famous for its literary production and for manuscripts, some of which are still preserved. All remnants of the monastic buildings have now vanished from the face of earth, but we have fairly precise descriptions of these buildings in official appraisals from 1684 and 1704, found in the Collection of the Procurators at the National Archives of Iceland. Further, current archeological research at Þingeyrar has added considerable new knowledge about Þingeyrar, e.g. the location of the monastic church. The appraisals of Þingeyrar Abbey can be compared to other known documents, medieval annals and charters, to construct a more complete picture of the monastic buildings and their interiors, primarily of the church where the monks had their library. This study forms an introduction to the first publication of the appraisals and it attempts to tell the history of the Church of Þingeyrar Abbey, which as it turns out seems to have survived more or less intact until 1695, when the Danish official Lauritz Gottrup had it torn down and a new one built.
eISSN 2387-6700