Gripla - 01.01.2000, Page 82

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GRIPLA
therefore escaped the notice of scholars writing on Icelandic Bible transla-
tions (e.g. Kirby 1986:83-84). I will in this article discuss the translation of
the Book of Judith and provide a transcript of the text.
2. A note on the scribes
The Judith text in 764 is written by three scribes. Scribe I wrote only the first
few lines (11. 5v33-41) as well some twelve lines immediately preceding the
Judith text. It is not a practised hand, but coarse and characterised by broad
strokes and angular letters. Scribe II wrote 6r and was also responsible for a
few lines on f. 2bisv (a slip between ff. 2 and 3). Scribe III wrote the remainder
of the text, ff. 6v-9r. That hand is one of the main hands of the manuscripts,
found also on ff. 10v38-l lr2, 18rl4, 36rl-13, 37v, 42v33-43r23 and 4bis.
Hand II and especially hand III display certain palaeographic and ortho-
graphic characteristics which link them to a group of scribes who were active
in Skagafjörður in the latter half of the fourteenth century. As an example one
might take their treatment of m and n where the last minim is elongated. This
is the rule in III but occurs more sporadically in II. This feature is also found
in several charters written in Skagafjörður in the last three decades of the
fourteenth century and linked to the family of Akrar (Ólafur Halldórsson
1963:101, Stefán Karlsson 1970:126-129, Louis-Jensen 1970:152) and it is
frequent in manuscripts associated with the same scribal school, for instance
in Sth perg 19 4to (Foote 1990:26). Scribes II and III also frequently write r
rotunda following a (and y in the case of hand III), a feature likewise found in
manuscripts produced by the so-called Akrar-school, for instance in AM 573
4to (Louis-Jensen 1970:153).
Of orthographical peculiarities two will be mentioned here, both pertain-
ing to scribe III. He/she writes “nuckur” for the pronoun ‘nökkurr’, albeit not
consistently (cf. 7r5-6). The form nuckur is an important tell-tale feature
since it is found in two other manuscripts which have been associated with
the Akrar-school, 573 and AM 596 4to, but is hardly seen elsewhere (Driscoll
1992:xxxvi-xxxvii).2 Scribe III also frequently writes iæ for æ following v
(e.g. “uiænst” 7vl9, “auruiænna” 8r32), a characteristic noted in a number of
fourteenth-century manuscripts and charters. As Janez Oresnik has pointed
out (1982:193), this spelling probably reflects the dipthongisation of æ, a
sound change which eventually proved abortive. It is found, predominantly,
2 Driscoll records that nukkur also occurs in AM 657 c 4to. Cf. also Hreinn Benediktsson 1961
and Stefán Karlsson 1967:26.