Gripla - 20.12.2010, Blaðsíða 158

GRIPLA158
§ 5.
The history of M over the centuries is one of cumulative physical deterio-
ration. The outermost bifolium of quire 10 still existed in Iceland in the
second quarter of the seventeenth century, for at that time the whole text
of Egils saga, including the portions contained on these two leaves, was
copied directly from M into a now lost manuscript of which numerous
derivatives are known; in Bjarni Einarsson’s critical work on Egils saga the
designation *M1 is used for this lost copy.28 Not quite the same good for-
tune has attended the transmission of Fóstbrœðra saga: while the middle
bifolium of quire 25 and probably the whole of quire *26 were still present
when that saga was copied in Denmark by Árni Magnússon and his col-
laborator Ásgeir Jónsson, the remainder of the text had—as Árni
Magnússon remarks on a slip at the front of the copy, AM 566 b 4to—
already gone missing.29 On this point the condition of M had remained
more or less unchanged since Fóstbrœðra saga was copied from it, presum-
ably in the north of Iceland, into the lost source of our oldest extant paper
manuscript of the saga, SKB isl. Papp. 4:o nr 4.30 Papp. 4 was written by
Þorleifur Jónsson í Grafarkoti, an employee of Bishop Þorlákur Skúlason
of Hólar,31 at about the same time as the *M1-transcript of Egla.
It can be seen from spaces left blank in the extant derivatives of *M1
(especially clearly in AM 455 4to, written in 1660 by the Rev. Helgi
Grímsson of Húsafell) that larger or smaller segments of M ff. 69v–70r
28 See Jón Helgason, “Athuganir um nokkur handrit Egils sögu,” Nordæla: Afmæliskveðja til
Sigurðar Nordals 14. september 1956 (Reykjavík: Helgafell, 1956), 110–48 [English transla-
tion by Michael Chesnutt in Opuscula XII: 3–47], here esp. § 13; Bjarni Einarsson, “Um
Eglutexta Möðruvallabók í 17du aldar eftirritum,” Gripla VIII (1994): 7–53, and Egils saga
Skallagrímssonar, XLIII–LVIII; Michael Chesnutt, “Recon struc tion from Transcripts: The
Case of Egils saga Skallagrímssonar in Möðruvallabók, an Icelandic Codex of the Fourteenth
Century,” Care and Conservation of Manuscripts 7, eds. Gillian Fellows-Jensen and Peter
Spring borg (Copen hagen: Tusculanum, 2003), 17–26.
29 Árni Magnússon writes ‘vantar nærri halfa aptan vid’; quoted by Kålund, Katalog over den
Arna magn æ anske håndskriftsamling, vol. I, 720, no. 1413. AM 566 b is assigned to Ásgeir
Jónsson’s (first) period of resi dence in Copenhagen 1686–1688 (see n. 37 be low).
30 It should be noted that Björn K. Þórólfsson in his edition of Fóstbrœðra saga (Copenhagen:
Sam fund til udgivelse af gammel nordisk litteratur, 1925–27), XVI, reckons with more than
one intermediary between M and Papp. 4.
31 See most recently Peter Foote (ed.), Jóns saga Hólabyskups ens helga (Copenhagen: Reitzel,
2003), 207*–12*.