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which may have been written by Björn Jónsson himself. this must remain
speculation: what we do know is that AM 202 k II fol. was written by Jón
Gissurarson (d. 1648) and Am 203 fol. by jón erlendsson (fl. 1625–1672).
since the commentary is dated to 1641, Am 202 k II fol. stands a fair
chance of being the earliest extant witness, with a 7-year window within
which it may have been copied. We cannot rule out, however, the pos-
sibility that the text in Am 203 fol. is chronologically anterior, since jón
Erlendsson was also active in the 1640s. AM 192 fol. is also in the hand
of jón erlendsson and is, as jón Helgason states, clearly a direct copy of
Am 203 fol. due to jón Helgason’s diminished interest in manuscripts
which he deemed to be ‘værdiløse for tekstkritiken’ [worthless for textual
criticism], however, the precise location of dependent manuscripts within
the stemma is not always given (see figure 1).20
the two areas of ambiguity in the stemma revolve around the prov-
enance of the texts of Am 591 k 4to and that present in Am 167 b III 8vo.
the former is in the hand of ólafur Gíslason (c. 1646–1714) and presents
problems mainly because of that author’s extremely idiosyncratic copy-
ing style.21 the text shows omissions, additions and shifts in word-order
which confound traditional stemmatic approaches. Since many of Ólafur
gíslason’s texts show similar abberant formulations, it would seem not to
stem from and reflect his sources, but rather may be a consequence of that
individual’s particularly free approach to scribal practice. It may be that
he simply chose not to abide by the somewhat slavish approach to textual
transmission as adopted by many of his contemporaries, or that larger-
than-average chunks of text were memorised by him in order to be copied
and thus more variation crept in accidentally. jón Helgason is certain that
Am 591 k 4to is related to r2 but admits that a precise and definitive state-
ment of its source is difficult to provide.22
Despite these problems, in the sections of the commentary which are
most faithfully copied, several small shared readings suggest that Am 591
20 jón Helgason, introduction to Heiðreks saga, ix.
21 on Ólafur gíslasonʼs manuscripts see Agnete Loth, “Sønderdelte arnamagnæanske
papirhåndskrifter,” Opuscula 1 (1960). Another example of Ólafur gíslasonʼs free
copying style is a text of Illuga saga Gríðarfóstra in Am 591 g 4to. see Philip Lavender,
“Whatever Happened to Illuga saga Gríðarfóstra? Origin, transmission and Reception of a
Fornaldarsaga” (Phd diss., University of Copenhagen, 2015), 60–64.
22 jón Helgason, introduction to Heiðreks saga, xiv.
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