Gripla - 20.12.2010, Page 156

GRIPLA156
Matter belonging broadly to the category of legendary history (2)
Scribe 1: AM 325 XI 2 b 4to; AM 573 4to
Annalistic matter (1)
Scribe 2: AM 420 a 4to
This number of examples is sufficiently large for the prevailing quarto
format to be consi dered significant. When the distribution of formats by
genre is reviewed in Old Norwe gian and Ice landic manu scripts before the
middle of the fourteenth century, it becomes evident that the double-col-
umn layout ordinarily requiring a broadish leaf (20 cm or more) was
reserved for material addres sed to the learned if not powerful, and the
powerful if not learned, members of society. The earliest Icelandic example
I know is the homi ly book AM 237 a fol. from about 1150.26 Up wards of a
century later we find legal texts from Iceland such as KB (R) GKS 1157 fol.
and AM 334 fol. (Grágás etc.), as well as didactic and courtly texts from
Norway: SKB isl. Perg. fol. nr 6 (Barlaams saga) and UUB DG: 4–7 fol.+
AM 666 b 4to (Elís saga, Streng leikar etc.). DG: 4–7 also contains part of a
Norwegian manu script of Oddr Snorrason’s Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar, and
is more or less coeval with RLH Lbs. fragm. 82 (olim SKB isl. Perg. fol.
nr. 9 I), the famous Icelandic fragment of Heims kringla carried to Sweden
in the seven teenth century by Jón Eggertsson. By the early four teenth cen-
tury the double-column format had be come popular in Iceland for histori-
cal literature, e.g. AM 39 fol. (konungasögur), but not for Íslendingasögur,
riddarasögur, or fornaldarsögur. The luxury codex of Njáls saga known as
Kálfalækjarbók, AM 133 fol., is almost as big as M, but has single columns.
So does the more or less contemporary though admittedly more compact
anthology of romantic and legendary fiction in SKB isl. Perg. 4:o nr 7 +
AM 580 4to (also including the beginning of Egils saga, and thereby pass-
ing an unconscious comment on the compiler’s perception of narrative
genre).27
26 For the dating see Hreinn Benediktsson, Early Icelandic Script (Reykjavík: Handritastofnun
Ís lands/Manuscript Institute of Iceland, 1965), iii.
27 This manuscript and its text of Egla are discussed in detail in Michael Chesnutt (ed.),
“Stockholm Perg. 4:o nr. 7, bl. 57r–58v,” Opuscula XII: 209–27.