Gripla - 20.12.2013, Blaðsíða 50

GRIPLA50
manuscript have not been published, but Hallgrímur Ámundason edited
the texts and made a detailed description of the manuscript, its language,
and its orthography in his 1994 B.A. thesis.15 As I can add little to his
thorough discussion of the manuscript, I summarize his findings below for
the benefit of those without access to his work.
Árni Magnússon noted on a slip now attached to the manuscript that
he obtained AM 655 XXVII 4to “fra Magnuse jons syne i snoksdal.”16 the
manuscript consists of 12 relatively intact leaves (Hallgrímur’s fols. 2–13)
and 2 fragmentary ones (his fols. 1 and 1a), which were originally arranged
in four quires. the leaves, all of which are in a rather poor state of pre-
servation, were bound in the wrong sequence, but the original order of the
texts is restored in Hallgrímur’s edition. the manuscript contains 11 texts,
nearly all of which are fragmentary. the present essay is concerned mainly
with items 1 and 11, which are, respectively, an enumeration of Christian
virtues and a homily for the Annunciation. the remaining texts in the
manuscript indicate a strong Marian focus. Items 3 (for the Assumption),
4 (an eschatological sermon), 7, 8, and 9 (apparently all for Christmas)
are closely related to parts of Maríu saga.17 other pieces include part of
an old norse translation of the Gospel of nicodemus (item 5),18 the end
15 Hallgrímur Ámundason, “AM 655 XXVII 4to: útgáfa, stafagerð, stafsetning” (B.A. thesis,
university of Iceland, 1994). I thank Hallgrímur for providing me with an electronic copy.
In this copy, the different sections of the thesis are individually paginated. therefore, when
citing from the thesis in the following pages, I will clarify whether I am citing from his
introduction (“Inngangur”) or the edition proper (“útgáfa”).
16 on the life of Magnús jónsson see Páll eggert ólason, Íslenzkar æviskrár frá landnámstímum
til ársloka 1940, vol. 3 (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka bókmenntafélag, 1950), 434–435.
17 According to Hallgrímur, (“AM 655 XXVII 4to,” “Inngangur,” 4), the correspondences
to C.R. unger’s edition of Maríu saga (Maríu saga: Legender om jomfru Maria og hendes
jartegn [oslo: Brögger and Christie, 1871]) are as follows: item 3 ≈ Unger, 57, l. 9 – 58, l.
2 and 396, ll. 2–25; item 4 ≈ Unger, 52–56 and 391–95; item 7 ≈ Unger, 26, l. 8 – 28, l. 19
and 366, l. 6 – 367, l. 24; item 8 ≈ Unger, 28, l. 21 – 29, l. 9 and 367, l. 26 – 368, l. 12; item
9 ≈ Unger, 29, ll. 11–17 and 368, ll. 13–19. If these texts represent a purposeful adaptation
of parts of Maríu saga as “sermones” (the scribe’s own term), they are, as far as I know,
unique, and raise new questions about that work’s circulation and use. some relationship
with the homiletic corpus was already suggested by the discovery that at least one homily
was incorporated into Maríu saga (Hall, “old norse-Icelandic sermons,” 675). see also
Icelandic Homily Book, 7–8; Hall, “old norse-Icelandic sermons,” 678.
18 this text is not discussed in kirsten Wolf’s important article, “the Influence of the
Evangelium Nicodemi on norse Literature: A survey,” Mediaeval Studies 55 (1993): 219–42.
significantly, the AM 655 XXVII 4to version of the Gospel of nicodemus seems to be the
only old West norse text to contain the Gesta Pilati section of the apocryphon as well as