Gripla - 20.12.2010, Blaðsíða 152

GRIPLA152
More than one deduction can be made from this survey. In the first place,
wear and tear is particularly noticeable at some quire boundaries where a
new text be gins: see quires 13 (Finnboga saga), 18–19 (Ǫlkofra þáttr), 20
(Laxdœla saga). This must mean that leaves nor mally protected by lying
underneath one another in a pile of loose quires were ex posed to dirt and
damp when a text was lifted out of the pile to be read. In the second place,
Njáls saga and Egils saga were not destined from the beginning to belong
with each other, or with the re main ing quires. As already observed by Jón
Helga son, the vacant space at the end of quire 7 (nearly three whole col-
umns), followed by the notice about *Gauks saga at the bottom of the last
page, implies that the scribe—or, more accurately in the context, the scribe
and those di recting his work—envisaged a separate codex containing Njáls
saga and its pro posed sequel. A fresh start was then to be made with Egils
saga:
Hann [skrifari Möðruvallabókar] virðist þá hafa gert ráð fyrir að
Njála og Gauks saga yrði codex út af fyrir sig [...]; fyrir því byrjar
hann næsta kver (þar sem Egla hefst) þannig að ljóst er að hann
hefur ætlazt til að þar yrði upphaf annars codicis.16
What is not commented on here is that Egils saga occupies five whole
quires, with the very first and very last pages deliberately left unused; the
intention must have been that the blank pages should protect the text
inside, and the priority assigned to this arrange ment appears from the fact
that the scribe has abbreviated the end of the saga in order to finish on the
pen ultimate page.17 That Egils saga led a temporary existence independent
of the material that now precedes and follows it would also seem to be
implied by the fact that wear and tear, and even loss of leaves, is observable
at quire boundaries within the limits of the ongoing text.
16 Jón Helgason, “Gauks saga Trandils sonar,” 103 (‘He [the writer of M] seems in other words
to have reckoned with Njála and Gauks saga making up a codex of their own [...]; therefore
he starts the next quire, where Egla com mences, in such a way that it is obvious he intended
this to be the beginning of a new codex’). A similar inter pre tation is proposed by Jonna
Louis-Jensen with respect to the blank page that begins a new quire with Breta sögur in AM
573 4to; it is maybe not a coincidence that part of this manuscript was written by the main
scribe of M. Cf. Jonna Louis-Jensen (ed.), Trójumanna saga (Copenha gen: Munksgaard,
1963), XXXII.
17 Cf. Bjarni Einarsson (and the present writer) in Egils saga Skallagrímssonar, vol. I, XXII with
n. 6.