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entry for M it seems to be taken for granted that this was the medieval
binding.7 That assumption has been chal lenged by Sigur geir Steingrímsson,
who points out that the boards “are actually too small for the book and do
not protect the edges of the manuscript leaves at all,” and that they and the
parchment leaves now inside them need not have been brought together
until about the time that Björn Magnús son took the manuscript to Den-
mark.8
An examination of the extant material leaves no doubt that the quires
of M remained unbound for a very long time.9 As noted in Kålund’s cata-
logue and again by Jón Helgason in an excellent short presentation of the
manuscript, defacement of the original writing can be regu lar ly observed
at the boundaries between quires10 (the term ‘faded’ is used below as
shorthand for any kind of deterioration in the quality of the original writ-
ing; such deterio ration may be the result of more than one physical pro-
cess, e.g. friction, or—perhaps most often—the penetration of moisture
between the leaves):
Quire no. Foliation Remarks
*1 (—) Beginning of Njáls saga lost and replaced by younger
material (ff. [3]–[12]).
2 13–20 First page badly faded; last page erased and re placed
by younger material (f. [20 bis]).
3 21–28 First and last pages badly faded.
7 Katalog over den Arnamagnæanske håndskriftsamling, udg. af kommissionen for det
Arnamagn æan ske legat [ved Kr. Kålund], vol. I (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1889), 94: “Det
opr(indelige) bind er to svære træ plader med læderryg.”
8 Sigurgeir Steingrímsson, “The care of the manuscripts in the Árni Magnússon Institute
in Iceland,” Care and conservation of manuscripts [1], eds. Gillian Fellows-Jensen and Peter
Spring borg (Copenhagen: Royal Library, 1995), 63.
9 The following remarks are based on the facsimile mentioned in n. 5 and on observations
made by previous students. When this article was drafted, M was on display at the Culture
House (Þjóðmenningarhúsið) in Reykjavík and therefore not accessible for direct inspec-
tion. A diplomatic edition and linguistic commentary were published by the Dutch scholar
Andrea (van Arkel-) de Leeuw van Weenen, Möðruvallabók AM 132 fol. (Leiden: Brill,
1987) and A Grammar of Möðruvallabók (Leiden: Research School CNWS, 2000); the
second chapter of the Grammar con tains a very thorough description of the manuscript.
Here I have adopted van Weenen’s quire numbering for conve ni ence of reference.
10 Katalog over den Arna magn æ anske håndskriftsamling, vol. I; Jón Helga son, Handrita spjall
(Reykjavík: Mál og menning, 1958), 59.
MÖÐRUVALLABÓ K