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Langebek’s and Suhm’s printed text, but he does not attempt to fill the
lacunae in the text which are caused by a defect on the first recto page of
AM 382 4to.47 Jón Sigurðsson writes in a marginal note on folio 5r of
JS 537 4to: “Þetta kvæði stendr á fremstu síðunni í AM 382 4to (B) og er að
líkindum eptir sama manninn, sem söguna hefir samið. Bragrinn er hexa-
metrum og aðalhending í hverju vísuorði” [This poem is found on the first
page of AM 382 4to (B) and likely it is by the same man who composed the
saga. The meter is hexameter with rhyming syllables in each line].48 The
Latin poem has further been edited by Jón Þorkelsson in Íslenzkar
ártíðaskrár eða Obituaria Islandica49 and by Paul Lehmann.50 These two
transcriptions are identical for the most part51 but differ greatly from
Langebek’s and Suhm’s text as well as Jón Sigurðsson’s version, producing
a much inferior text, which clearly shows that they were not familiar with
the two previous transcriptions. Prior to publishing the text of the poem,
Jón Þorkelsson mentions it in Om digtningen på Island i det 15. og 16 årh.52
He points out that the poem is in hexameter,53 a statement that he amends
in Íslenzkar ártíðarskrár, where he suggests that the meter should probably
47 JS 537 4to, http://www.handrit.is/da/manuscript/imaging/is/JS04–0537 – There is of
course a chance that the first recto page of AM 382 4to was damaged after the transcription
used by Langebek and Suhm was made. However, since already Árni Magnússon comments
on the many damaged sections of the manuscript, this seems unlikely. See Kristian Kålund,
ed., Arne Magnussons i AM. 435 A-B, 4to indeholdte Håndskriftfortegnelser (Copenhagen:
Gyldendalske Boghandel Nordisk Forlag, 1909), 62, and Susanne Fahn, “Revealing the
Secrets of a Medieval Manuscript. Description and Analysis of the Manuscript AM 382
4to in the Árni Magnússon Institute in Iceland” (M.A. thesis, University of Iceland, 2006),
3–5. For a more detailed description of fol. 1r in AM 382 4to, see section 3 in this article.
48 JS 537 4to, fol. 5r. Jón Helgason also comes to the conclusion that the poem and the saga
text were written by the same person. He describes the appearance of the carmen in his
papers, a collection of loose pages intended to become his introduction to the 1978 edition
of Þorláks saga helga. Jón Helgason, “Archive Box 12.”
49 Jón Þorkelsson, Íslenzkar ártíðaskrár eða Obituaria Islandica (Copenhagen: Hið íslenzka
bókmentafélag, 1893 – 1896), 144–145.
50 Paul Lehmann, Skandinaviens Anteil an der lateinischen Literatur und Wissenschaft des
Mittelalters, Vol. 2 (Munich: Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1937),
118.
51 For a more detailed comparison between the two editions, see Fahn, “Revealing the Sec-
rets,” 108–110.
52 Jón Þorkelsson, Om digtningen på Island i det 15. og 16. årh (Copenhagen: Høst, 1888), 23.
53 Ibid., 23.
THE FORGOTTEN POEM