Gripla - 2020, Qupperneq 9

GRIPLA8
how editors approached them. Finally, we offer our contribution to the
debate: a stylometric analysis of the two redactions which supports the
primacy of the C-redaction and rehabilitates the notion that the unique
section of the A-redaction is a retelling. This opens the way for future
research into the saga’s redactions and, in particular, stresses the need for
a new edition.
Understanding Ljósvetninga saga’s Transmission
and Redactions
Ljósvetninga saga has a famously complex transmission. One version of
the saga, the A-redaction, is only preserved in lacuna-filled form in the late
fourteenth or early fifteenth-century manuscript AM 561 4to (561) and
in a nineteenth century copy of it produced by Guðbrandur Vigfússon,
Bodleian MS Icelandic c. 9. The other version, designated the C-redaction,
is preserved in 3 leaves of the fragmentary AM 162 C fol. (162), and in
more than 50 paper copies which are all likely derived from it.1 The two
medieval manuscripts and their copies garnered much attention due to the
fact that, while in certain parts they contain similar (though not entirely
the same) wording and order of events, other parts are completely omitted
from 561 (the A-redaction), or are executed with significantly different
details, wording, and narrative in 561 and 162 (the C-redaction).
As illustrated in Figure 1, the A- and C-redactions differ in three major
ways:
1. Following the highly similar chapters 1–4,2 the C-redaction fea-
tures three episodes traditionally designated as þættir: sörla þáttr,
1 See Yoav Tirosh, “On the Receiving End: The Role of Scholarship, Memory, and Genre in
Constructing Ljósvetninga saga” (Doctoral thesis, University of Iceland, Reykjavík, 2019),
36; Origines Islandicae, A Collection of the More Important sagas and Other native Writings
Relating to the settlement and Early History of Iceland, Vol. 2, ed. and trans. Guðbrandur
Vigfússon and F. York Powell (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905), 344, 346; Glúma og
Ljósvetninga saga, xix–xx, xxv, xxviii; Ljósvetninga saga, ed. Björn Sigfússon, íslenzk fornrit
10 (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1940), lvii; and Guðvarður Már Gunnlaugsson,
“AM 561 4to og Ljósvetninga saga,” Gripla 18 (2007): 70. Analyses of the B-redaction point
to it being derived from the C-redaction; see Tirosh, “On the Receiving End,” 43–45.
2 Chapter numbers follow the C-redaction. The C-redaction chapters 5–12 were probably
never a part of the A-redaction, but we refer to A chapters 13–18 so that the numbers are
aligned with C. We are aware that this is an “editorial” choice that prioritizes the org-
anization of material in the C-redaction, but this accords with our main conclusions.