Gripla - 01.01.1977, Side 20

16
GRIPLA
the Landeyjar and Bergþórshvoll in the introduction to my edition of
the saga. And before doing so I discussed the matter with experts. In
this way I learned a great deal from my friends the late rector Pálmi
Hannesson and Professor Sigurður Þórarinsson. The same applies in
the case of the late Professor Ólafur Lárusson and his observations on
the changes in the river courses in this area. But naturally I alone am
responsible for what I have written on the subject.
It is a pity that no other geologists have expressed any views on the
subject in recent years. The lack of a thorough-going geo-chronological
study is especially to be regretted.
Furthermore I should like to point out that farvegr or árfarvegr—the
dry bed of a river—is not, to the best of my knowledge, normally called
dalr in Icelandic. The bed of the Affall would presumably have ap-
peared as a long line in the landscape; but dalr is not a line. Besides, it
would of course be nonsense to describe the bed of the Affall as being
in the hill. For this reason the editor of the periodical in question
ventured the conjecture that the text of the saga was corrupt here, at
being replaced by í. But ‘dalr at hválinum’ is by no means a good—and
in my opinion not an elegant—text. And at this point I would like to
consider the text a little further. We find that all the parchment manu-
scripts with this passage have the reading ‘dalr var í hválinum’, not ‘at
hválinum’. There are five of these, and they represent all three groups
among the parchment manuscripts. Their consensus is therefore very
important. But in addition, in this part of the saga the manuscript
Reykjabók (AM 468, 4to) has a number of variants, some of them
additions, which appear to be related to some variants in the fragment
AM 162b, folio, ð and kindred texts. Owing to the excellence of some
of these 8 readings I have been tempted to surmise that they may have
been later additions or emendations by the master himself to a manu-
script a little later than his original. But here there is no such emenda-
tion. All the parchments agree in giving ‘dalr var í hválinum’.
It is dangerously easy, if you do not like a text, to assert that it is
corrupt. But this expedient should not be lightly used. The text of the
saga is ‘dalr var í hválinum’, and until some better text is found—for
example, some paper manuscript preserving an older text—we must
accept it. But I believe that the hope of finding anything of the kind is
a forlorn one.