Gripla - 01.01.1979, Page 209

THE PROLOGUE TO SNORRA EDDA
205
There are in fact four paper manuscripts written in the seventeenth
century that contain parts of the prologue that appear to be derived
from R before the first leaf was lost, or else from a very similar manu-
script that contained the beginning of the text. The texts they contain
are neither complete nor accurate, but with their help it is possible to
make some fairly safe assumptions about the text on the missing leaf of
R. They are AM 755 4to, written by Ketill Jörundsson (1603-1670)
(K), NkS 1878 b 4to (N), Thott 1494 4to (Th), and Sth. Papp. fol. nr.
38, ff. 46v-50 (J), where the text of the prologue is found as part of
the Edda compilation attributed to Jón lærði Guðmundsson, dated
1641, but copied by Ásgeir Jónsson into this manuscript in the second
half of the seventeenth century. The contents of these four manuscripts
are described in sections 42-7, 135, 138, and 178 of the introduction
to Edda Magnúsar Ólafssonar, ed. A. Faulkes (Reykjavík, Stofnun
Árna Magnússonar, not yet published), and only their texts of the pro-
logue to Snorra Edda will be dealt with here.
These manuscripts include parts of the prologue that are in neither
R, T nor U, but do not include the two long ‘interpolations’ in W. This
in itself suggests that their texts of the prologue must be derived from
the text of R when it was complete, or else from another medieval
manuscript that is now lost. It is unlikely that a redactor either in the
middle ages or the seventeenth century would have supplied the be-
ginning of the prologue from W without also including the ‘interpola-
tions’. Moreover in the part of the text that is extant in R, these manu-
scripts sometimes agree with R against WTU, and in the part that is
lacking in R sometimes agree with U or T against W; examples are
given below (see also the textual notes below). But Jón lærði in his
Edda compilation clearly used more than one manuscript. One was
related to W, one to U, and one to R (at the time he was writing, U
and W, as well as T, were no longer in Iceland). At the beginning of his
compilation he has a prologue that is partly derived from the second
‘interpolation’ in W. His text of the prologue proper (headed ‘Her
byriar sialfa Snorra Eddu sva sem ec hefi hana stysta set, þo af þeim
gomlu skrifaða, sva sem hennar form, inntak eða afdrattr af þeirri sem
stærri oc fyllri er’) is most similar to R, and omits the long interpola-
tions of W; but he introduces occasional readings from W, as for
instance the passage in the textual note to SnE 6/21 (this is not in the