Gripla - 20.12.2010, Side 153

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Jón Helgason reduced the number of sagas in the M codex proper by
one (Njála); he could in fact have reduced it by two (not just Njála, but
also Egla). He did not speculate about what might have been lost prior to
the extant quires of Njála or after the extant quires of Fóst brœðra saga.
Calcula tions by Sig ur jón Páll Ísaksson suggest on the one hand that the
begin ning of Njála would not have filled the whole of the lost quire *1, and
on the other hand that the end of Fóstbrœðra saga would have filled more
than one, but less than two, quires after the mutilated quire 25. Other
mate rial may well have preceded Njála in the separate codex that was to
have contin ued with *Gauks saga, and have followed Fóstbrœðra saga after
its conclusion somewhere in quire *27.18
With Finnboga saga, which begins with a prominent initial at the top
left-hand cor ner of the first page of a new quire, an unbroken sequence of
texts also begins.19 These texts are now nine in number and may formerly
have been more, and probably occupied some 120 leaves (quires 13 ff.).
They were clearly meant to have constituted a separate codex and the first
five of them are ordered in geographical sequence clockwise around
Iceland, reminiscent of the arrangement of the original recension of
Landnámabók. An additional saga may have been lost prior to quire 13,
otherwise the first page of that quire would probab ly have been left blank
in the same way as is observable at the beginning of Egils saga. If the geo-
graphical order of the codex is not co incidental (and that it is in fact inten-
tional forms part of the philo logical communis opinio about M),20 the pos-
sibly mis sing saga might have been, to name just one candidate, Gull-Þóris
saga. None of the mate ri al was apparently bound at the time of wri ting;
instead the loose quires of the codex now repre sen ted by quires 13 ff. were
bundled together behind those containing Njála and Egla, and so they
remained until modern times.
18 See Sigurjón Páll Ísaksson, “Magnús Björnsson og Möðruvallabók,” 110, 113; neither
Sigurjón Páll Ísaksson nor Jón Helgason consider the theo retical possibility (which I also
discount) that Njáls saga was origi nally meant to have occu pied a place at the end, not the
beginning, of the codex.
19 Cf. Sigurjón Páll Ísaksson, “Magnús Björnsson og Möðruvallabók,” 108: “Stærstu stafirnir
eru í upp hafi Egils sögu og Finnboga sögu, eins og þar væri að byrja ný bók eða bókarhluti.”
20 See e.g. Stefán Karlsson, “Möðruvallabók,” Medieval Scandinavia: An Encyclopedia, eds.
Phillip Pulsiano and Kirsten Wolf (New York and London: Garland, 1993), 426–27.
MÖÐRUVALLABÓ K