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that the editing process becomes less visible, or even lost.7 In an analogy
with the learning of mathematics, Matthew Driscoll has argued that edi-
tors should be required to ‘show their workings’, that is, show the process
by which they arrive at a certain result.8 this article will discuss some of
these ‘workings’ in connection to three lines in Völuspá in R, and espe-
cially the editorial decisions which have been influential in the modern
transmission of the poem. As my examples will show, scribal orthography,
corrections and abbreviations force even the least interventionist editor to
choose between possible readings, which may in turn also be considered
to be variants.
In discussing how certain scribal practices force editorial interven-
tion upon the text, this article will also consider editorial practices which
might allow the reader to engage both with the text and the editorial deci-
sions that bring it about. As will be seen, the textual ambiguity that arises
from scribal practices of orthography or abbreviation makes it difficult
to present a ‘scribal version’ in A. g. rigg’s sense, that is, ‘a text that was
‘real’ for at least one person, its scribe’.9 Confronting a text on the manu-
script page that requires interpretation before it can become a text on the
printed page, all editors (except perhaps those of diplomatic editions) have
to choose the text; their choice might not correspond to that which was
real for the scribe. Despite their shortcomings, scribal versions can allow
the reader to take the editor’s choices into account. Bugge’s edition, for
example, presents a reconstructed text followed by the scribal texts in r
7 Judy Quinn has reviewed practices that had hitherto influenced the editing of the Poetic
Edda, especially Völuspá. She discusses how editors, aiming at the reconstruction of an
archetype, were engaged in a process of ‘poetic recreation’. this process, however, remains
hidden to the reader as the final text is presented on the page with ‘little or no indication of
the extent of editorial reconstruction and the suppression of variation that has taken place’.
Quinn, ‘Editing the Edda’, 74. See also Judy Quinn, ‘Vǫluspá and the Composition of eddic
verse’, in Atti del 12o Congresso internazionale di studi sull’alto Medioevo, ed. teresa Pàroli et
al. (Spoleto: Presso la Sede del Centro Studi, 1990), 303–20.
8 Matthew Driscoll, ‘the Words on the Page: thoughts on Philology, old and new’, in
Creating the Medieval Saga: Versions, Variability and Editorial Interpretations of Old Norse
Saga Literature, ed. Judy Quinn and Emily Lethbridge (Copenhagen: university Press of
southern denmark, 2010), 103.
9 A. G. Rigg, introduction to Editing Medieval Texts: English, French and Latin Written in
England. Papers given at the Twelfth Annual Conference on Editorial Problems, University of
Toronto 5–6 November 1976, ed. A. g. rigg (new York: garland, 1977), 6.
sCRIBAL PRACtICes ANd tHRee LINes IN V ö L U S P Á
GRIPLA XXVI. - 12.12.B.indd 31 12/13/15 8:24:27 PM