Gripla - 20.12.2014, Page 267

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and many kennings misunderstood. But there is also much conscious re-
ordering and re-arrangement, and there are additions from other sources or
scribal expansions. the scribe, or perhaps one of his predecessors, has not
only made a conscientious copy of his exemplar, with very little shorten-
ing, but has also added to the material in it and become engaged with his
work, so that many of his changes are positive ‘improvements’.
so although this late manuscript contains very little that is not found
in earlier manuscripts, and probably preserves very little in the way of
superior readings to those found elsewhere, it may be unique in its com-
bination of what is basically the longer (Y) version of Magnús Ólafsson’s
Edda with items from the shorter (X) version and other recensions such as
that in AM 742 4to, which may have been made by the well-known scholar
Björn Jónsson of Skarðsá (1574–1655) in the first half of the seventeenth
century; and also with elements going back to the Codex Regius of Snorra-
Edda (probably via one of the copies made of this before it left Iceland
in 1662). It bears witness to the continuing intelligent interest in norse
skaldic poetry into the nineteenth century, and if the above guess that it
was taken from Iceland by an emigrant to Denmark in the nineteenth cent-
ury is correct, it also shows that some such emigrants wished to preserve
the memory of the culture of their land of origin in their new homeland,
even the more esoteric and difficult aspects of its early culture that had
been brought to Iceland from norway in the early Middle Ages.6
Anthony Faulkes
210 Broughty Road
UK-Dundee, DD4 6LD
anthony.faulkes@talktalk.net
6 Lbs 1562 4to has also been found to contain ‘brief notes and summary extracts from’
Magnús Ólafsson’s Edda, though these are in some cases so shortened that the sentences
are incomplete. see Hrafnagaldur Óðins (Forspjallsljóð), ed. Annette Lassen (London:
Viking Society for northern research, 2011), 35–36.
A nEWLY DISCoVErED MAnuSCrIPt