Árni Magnússon

Árni Magnússon (Icelandic pronunciation: [ˈau(r)tnɪ ˈmaknusˌsɔːn]; 13 November 1663 – 7 January 1730) was an Icelandic scholar and collector of manuscripts who assembled the Arnamagnæan Manuscript Collection.

Early life and education

Árni was born in 1663 at Kvennabrekka in Dalasýsla, in western Iceland, where his father Magnús Jónsson was the minister (and later prosecutor and sheriff). His mother was Guðrún Ketilsdóttir, daughter of archdeacon Ketill Jörundarson of Hvammur. He was raised by his grandparents and uncle. At 17 he entered the Cathedral School in Skálholt, then three years later, in 1683, went to Denmark (with his father, who was part of a trade lobbying contingent) to study at the University of Copenhagen. There he earned the degree of attestus theologiæ after two years, and also became an assistant to the Royal Antiquarian, Thomas Bartholin, helping him prepare his Antiquitates danicæ and transcribing, translating, and annotating thousands of pages of Icelandic material.

Career

After Bartholin's death in 1690, Árni became librarian and secretary to a Danish statesman, Matthias Moth (brother of Sophie Amalie Moth, mistress to King Christian V until his death in 1699). From late 1694 to late 1696, he was in Germany, primarily to assess a book collection that had been offered to the university, but he extended the stay. Meanwhile, presumably thanks to his employer, he was appointed a professor designate at the university, and since he had never published, while still in Leipzig he published an edition of some Danish chronicles that he had copied while working for Bartholin. When he returned to Denmark, he resumed working for Moth but in 1697 was also appointed secretary at The Royal Secret Archives (Det Kongelige Gehejmearkiv). In 1699 he published anonymously, at Moth's request, an account of a witchcraft case in which Moth had been a judge, Kort og sandfærdig Beretning om den vidtudraabte Besættelse udi Thisted.