Gripla - 20.12.2008, Qupperneq 65

63
this from around 1290 to 1334 and notes that the scribe may have been
Icelandic or Norwegian (Jón Helgason 1960, xi, xx).
Finally, there is some question as to where in the original manuscript
Björn of Skarðsá found some of the items that he copied.5 The two
excerpts from Landnámabók came from AM 371, and Haukr’s genea-
logy and the list of the bishops of Greenland may have been located after
Kristni saga. This leaves the so-called Grænlands annáll, an addition to
Landnámabók, a list of the dioceses in Norway, a list of the dioceses in
England, a list of the dioceses in Scotland, the lengths of the stages from
Lübeck to Rome, a list of chronological terms, a list of the territories ruled
by Norway, a list of the districts of Norway, a discussion of Norse names,
and genealogies of the descendants of Sigurðr Fáfnisbani and Ragnarr loð-
brók without obvious locations in the manuscript. There must also have
been a list of the bishops of Oslo, which Björn omits in these excerpts
but copies into AM 258b VI 8vo with a reference to a divergent detail in
Hauksbók (Jón Helgason 1960, ix, nt. 4). Finnur Jónsson (1892–1896,
x–xi) supposed that there were two places in AM 544 where entire quires
were missing, but he was persuaded in each case that most likely the gaps
contained only the ending of the text found before the gap and the begin-
ning of the text found after the gap. Stefán Karlsson (1964, 118) disagreed,
arguing that in one of these places — between what is now the ninth and
tenth quires — two quires were missing, not one. This would leave room
for the excerpts whose locations are unaccounted for, and one could specu-
late that the list of the bishops of Oslo, the lists of dioceses, the lengths of
the stages from Lübeck to Rome, and the list of chronological terms came
after the end of Viðræða líkams ok sálar, and that the Grænlands annáll, the
addition to Landnámabók, the lists of Norway’s territories and districts,
the discussion of Norse names, and the genealogies of the descendants
of Sigurðr Fáfnisbani and Ragnarr loðbrók preceded the beginning of
Hemings þáttr. Jón Helgason (1960, xxxiii), however, held that the excerpts
most probably followed Kristni saga, and he also considered that they were
written in Haukr’s hand.
5 It is of course not certain that all these texts were in Hauksbók, but Finnur Jónsson (1892-
1896, cxxxiii) thought that it was most likely that this was the case, and Jón Helgason
(1960, xxxii–xxxiii) concurred.
PERSPECTIVES ON HAUKSBÓ K