Skáldskaparmál - 01.01.1997, Qupperneq 231

Words, Words, Words
229
oria 22 in the Arnamagnæan collection, first in Copenhagen, now in Reykjavík.7
The manuscript, which I shall refer to as 22, was written in 1695 by Jón
Þórðarson,8 who indicates in colophons that several of his texts, including that
of Skikkjurímur, were copied ‘efftir Norrænu kálfz sk(innz) b(ook) gamallj’.9 In
his report to the Commission10 Finnur specifically cites the text of Skikkjurímur
as one of two which are in this manuscript ‘gennemgáende [. . .] bedre og
korrektere end i de andre (i udgaver benyttede)’, and he subsequently used it as
the basis for his own edition of Skikkjurímur in his Rímnasafn.
The third manuscript is the paper MS nr. 15 in 4to in the Royal Library in
Stockholm, to which I shall refer as S. It is written in several hands from the
second half of the seventeenth century and contains eight other items, all prose
texts (a mixture of Islendinga- and fornaldarsögur),n The text it preserves of
Skikkjurímur is defective, breaking off toward the end, and is, in several other
respects, problematical. It preserves practically nothing (only one stanza out of a
total of21) ofthe mansöngvar{thesubjective, non-narrative introductions to each
of the cantos or fits). About a third of the remaining stanzas are lacking (not taking
into acount the lacuna at the end), and the order of those preserved is quite
different from that of the other two manuscripts. One stanza is a conflation of
two in the other manuscripts, while in another the couplets have been reversed.
S also contains an almost spectacular number of variant readings. It was therefore
clear to Cederschiöld that S presented ‘un texte assez corrompu’, and he cited
variants from it only in the few cases where \Cwas clearly corrupt and ó'appeared,
as he was careful to say, to have a better reading, or where the reading of S, although
bad, could be of help in reconstructing ‘the original’ reading.12 A few other
variants are also cited, personal names and other things that struck Cederschiöld
as interesting for one reason or another, but the vast majority are ignored. Finnur
Jónsson, in the introduction to his edition, refers also to ‘det meget dárlige hds.
i Stockh. Bibl. 15 pap 4°’, calling it ‘meget ung[t]’ - rather oddly, given that it is
certainly no younger, and in all probability slightly older, than 22— and ‘uden al
betydning’, for which reason it is ‘slet ikke benyttet’. Had he but known of the
existence of 22, Finnur assures us, Cederschiöld too ‘vilde [. . .] have lagt dette
hds. helt tilside’.13
7 The manuscript and its contents are discussed in Björn Karel Þórólfsson, Rlmur jyrir 1600, pp.
12-14; see also the introduction to Ólafur Halidórsson’s edition of Áns rímur bogsveigis
(Reykjavík, 1973), esp. pp. 36-7. It was returned to Iceland in November 1989.
8 Jón Þórðarson copied several manuscripts for Magnús í Vigur; see Jón Helgason, ‘Inngangur’,
Kvaðabók úr Vigur, AM148, 8vo, íslenzk rit síðari alda, 2. flokkur, 1. bindi B, pp. 7-14.
9 AM Acc. 22, p. 394; similar statements are found on pp. 233 and 532.
10 Den Arnamagnæanske Kommissions Arkiv, Styrelsen, Korrespondance, 17 (1898-1906), Jn°
7, 1902.
11 See Vilhelm Gödel, Katalog öjver Kongl. Bibliotekets fomislandska och fomnorska Handskrifier
(Stockholm, 1897-1900), pp. 277-9.
12 Cederschiöld, Versions nordiques, p.73.
13 Rímnasafn, II, p. 326; he does, in fact, cite one variant from it.