Íslenzk tunga - 01.01.1964, Page 45

the sources of specimen lexici runici
43
It is noticeable that most of the quotations which seem to have
been inserted by Guðmundur are inaccurate; the inaccuracy of the
quotations is also a characteristic of LI. This may not have been en-
tirely due to carelessness, for from the time of Guðmundur’s release
from prison to the publication of SLR there were barely six months,
which would not leave him much time to check his quotations with
the manuscripts, even if these had been available to him. But there
were certainly not many in Copenhagen at this time. Because of these
circumstances, it is probable that he was forced to make most of the
quotations, both those which he inserted into SLR, and those in his
own dictionary, from memory.
Another fact that favours the theory that Guðmundur was re-
sponsible for most of the additions to the original glossary is that
niost of these additions occur in the first part of the glossary. Of 54
quotations probably inserted by him, 49 are in the part of the glos-
sary from A—H, and out of all the entries lacking in DG 55, over
half occur in this part of the glossary. This is consistent with the idea
of a reviser without much time, as it is evident that a thorough re-
vision was begun, but never completed.
Additions to the Glossary from Brynjólfur Sveinsson’s Con-
JEctanea. A small group of the additions to the original glossary
derive from Brynjólfur Sveinsson’s Conjectanea (AM 856 4to).
These may have been selected and inserted into SLR by Worm him-
self. Nothing has been added to the material in Conjectanea which
demands any knowledge of Icelandic, and some of the mistakes in the
transcription of the Icelandic quotations imply that the copier did
not in fact know anything of the language at all, cf. especially the
quotation from Sturlaugs Saga (see below, p. 45). On the other hand,
Worm may have delegated the task to some other person, perhaps
Guðmundur Andrésson, who refers to Saxo’s Historia in LI p. 120, s.
v. Hradningr. In the list of sources in SLR (but not in DG 55), Worm
includes “Brynolphus Svenonius”, and he makes special mention in
the preface of the help he has had from Bishop Brynjólfur. Both