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indeed been com missioned, but the sponsors—not for the first time in the
history of the wealthier clas ses—failed to pay up.24 However, it must also
be seriously considered that the work was carried out as a speculative ven-
ture, that is to say in the hope of finding buyers who never materialised.
The careful arrangement of Egils saga as an independent codi cological
entity, with protective blank pages front and back, might even suggest that
single sagas were sometimes copied in the expectation that a prospective
buyer might wish to specify what other texts he required; this is in fact the
situation we see before our eyes at the end of Njáls saga, where directions
are given for *Gauks saga to be added.
§ 4.
Stefán Karlsson compiled a list of nine or ten other (fragments of) manu-
scripts attributable to the main scribe of M and to the second scribe who
supplied missing strophes in Egils saga.25 The texts represent several gen-
res:
Legal matter (3)
Scribe 1: AM 173 c 4to
Scribe 2: KB (R) GKS 3268 4to; KB (R) GKS 3270 4to
Devotional matter (3)
Scribe 1: AM 220 I fol. + RLH Lbs. fragm. 5; AM 240 V fol.;
AM 642 a I 4to
(Note in addition the fragment of Stjórn in AM 229 II fol.,
possibly but not certainly the work of Scribe 1)
24 For the dramatic outcome of a probable debt-collection attempt on the part of a profes-
sional manu script illuminator in the year 1335, see Jonna Louis-Jensen, “Fra skriptoriet
i Vatnsfjörður i Eiríkr Sveinbjarnarsons tid,” Con Amore (Copenhagen: Reitzel, 2006),
321–36 [also in Else Mundal (ed.), Reykholt som makt- og lærdomssenter i den is landske og
nordiske kontekst (Reykholt: Snorrastofa, 2006)].
25 Stefán Karlsson, Sagas of Icelandic Bishops (as n. 3 above). In a previous article I have put
forward the idea that the second scribe supervised the copying of Egla. This does not
necessarily mean that he was also the person who gave in structions to add *Gauks saga,
nor indeed can it be taken for granted that the main scribe of M was the recipient of those
in structions. Cf. Michael Chesnutt, “Tekstkritiske bemærkninger til C-redaktionen af
Egils saga,” Opuscula XII, ed. Britta Olrik Frederiksen (Copenhagen: Reit zel, 2005), 241
n. 8.
MÖÐRUVALLABÓ K