Gripla - 20.12.2004, Page 38

GRIPLA36
Sth perg fol nr 12 IV,30 is a single leaf from the fifteenth century containing
text from Exodus 4:19–7:16. It is straight translation for the most part but with
some abridgment and paraphrase (cf. Svanhildur Óskarsdóttir 2000:107–109).
Unger thought this came closest in manner to Stjórn II, but Storm and Kirby
count it from the same workshop as Stjórn III. Seip on the other hand refused
to believe it has any connection with Stjórn at all (Unger 1862:v–vi; Storm
1886b:248; Seip 1957:13). There seems most to be said for the view of Storm
and Kirby.
A last fragment to mention is AM 1056 4to IV, from the first half of the
fourteenth century, containing material from 1 Samuel.31 As Kirby has shown,
this is not a first-hand translation of Scripture or derived from Stjórn III but
represents a rendering of Historia scholastica (see Kirby 1986:104–105).
Unger and Storm and a good many other scholars reckoned that Stjórn III
represented the oldest translation, though it had possibly been subject to some
revision after about the middle of the thirteenth century. As we decided above,
however, a sounder verdict is that Stjórn II constitutes the remains of the
earliest Norse-Icelandic version. It was long believed that a chronological
limit was set for the Stjórn III translation by its relation to Konungs skuggsjá,
because Storm (1860:83–88), who was the first to compare the two works,
had concluded that biblical passages in Konungs skuggsjá were indubitably
borrowed from a Stjórn III text. There is no doubt of a literary connection be-
tween them, and Storm’s conclusion was generally accepted. Recently how-
ever it has been challenged, independently of each other, by Dietrich Hofmann
(1973:1–40) and Sverre Bagge (1974:163–202), whose findings are dia-
metrically opposed to those of Storm; according to them, the biblical passages
are original in Konungs skuggsjá and were utilised by the author of Stjórn III.
The passages in question are in a single section in Konungs skuggsjá (Holm-
Olsen 1945:107–21) but they do not occur there in biblical order and in Stjórn
III they are naturally dispersed to their original contexts (Hofmann 1973:2–3).
Reference should be made to Hofmann and Bagge for their detailed argu-
ments, but a main plank in their reasoning is that the corresponding passages
in Konungs skuggsjá and Stjórn III are often not plain biblical translation but
texts which have been adapted in their vernacular version to suit the ideas
30 Printed by Unger 1862:v–vii, and Kirby 1986:142–145 (Appendix C).
31 First printed in 1865 by O. Nielsen:261–262; more accuratetely in Kirby 1986:146–149 (Ap-
pendix C). Cf. also Astås 1970:131–137.