Gripla - 01.01.2000, Qupperneq 212

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GRIPLA
usual attributes are a crown and a sceptre with a phial of oil. In 893, her relics
were inspected and dispersed, some to the Rhineland, others to Flanders and
France. Many churches and chapels in Europe carry her name, and she is the
patroness of a number of monasteries and fratemities.
Despite her popularity, the only testimony to any knowledge of Saint Wal-
burga in Iceland is AM 764 4to, where she appears in the company of a num-
ber of saints, including Malchus, Remigius, Elizabeth of Schönau (ed. Wid-
ding and Bekker-Nielsen 1961), the saints of Selja, Cuthbert, Bede, and Ed-
ward the Confessor, most of whom, like Saint Walburga, appear to have en-
joyed limited popularity, if any, in Iceland. Fell (1981:98) suggests that the
proximity of the selections dealing with the three Anglo-Saxon saints — Wal-
burga (fol. 34r-v), Cuthbert (fol. 36r), and Bede (fol. 36r) — may indicate
“that the compiler was working from a single source for his material on the
Anglo-Saxons here ...” As Cormack (1994:35) notes, the excerpts on Bede
and Cuthbert are so brief that such a source would be extremely difficult to
identify.
2.
A diplomatic edition of the excerpt on Saint Walburga in AM 764 4to fol.
34r-v is presented below. Abbreviations are expanded in accordance with the
normal spelling of the scribe. Expansion of abbreviations by means of a sup-
ralinear symbol or letter or by means of contraction are marked in italics. In
the case of abbreviation by suspension, the expansion is placed in parenthe-
ses. Words or letters now illegible but assumed to have originally been in the
manuscript are printed in square brackets. Matter never present but presumed
to have been inadvertently omitted is added in diagonal brackets.
The expansion of W (= Walburga) in the oblique cases poses a problem
and merits comment. The name appears four times in the acc. case (34rl4,
34v3, 7, 36) and is written W with a superscript a\ accordingly it is expanded
"Nalburga', although this is in accordance with neither Icelandic nor Latin
inflections. In the dat. case it occurs once (34vl9); it is written W and ex-
panded ‘W(alburga)’. There are eight examples of the gen. case. In three of
these (34rl9, 34vl2, 37) it is written W with a superscript v and expanded
"Walburgv’; in one (34r23) it is written with a superscript e and expanded
‘Walburge'-, and in the remaining four (34rll, 27, 34v28, 32) it is written
with the ar-abbrcviation sign and expanded ‘Walburgar’.
The upper right-hand comer of the leaf has been tom with the result that
about one-third of a line of text on each side has been eliminated. Moreover,