Gripla - 2021, Page 21

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4to, where the bifolium would have been, there are usually forty lines per
side.39 As is the case with most Icelandic manuscripts, including AM 764
4to, the parchment of 980 is dark and somewhat dirty, but the text is for
the most part legible. The leaves are otherwise undamaged and seem to
have retained their original size. The text flows uninterrupted between the
two leaves, and so, assuming it comes from a quire of an unknown size, it
must have been the innermost bifolium. But seeing as the quire structure
of Reynistaðarbók is quite irregular,40 it is possible that it was never meant
to form a part of a quire.
The above discussion shows that the Stowe-bifolium was originally a
part of the Reynistaðarbók codex and, furthermore, that it was kept as a
part of AM 764 4to after it had come into Árni Magnússon’s possession.
Sometime after Árni compiled his list in the first third of the eighteenth
century and before Grímur Thorkelin gave Thomas Astle the bifolium in
1787, someone removed it from AM 764 4to. The most obvious suspect
would be Thorkelin himself. As was mentioned above, on a small paper
leaf preceding the parchment bifolium in Stowe MS 980 (f. 39), Thorkelin
has written: “Anecdotes of Several Archbishopes of Canterbury written in
the Icelandic language about the beginning of the xiv Century.” The first
part of that description is nearly identical with Árni Magnússon’s entry on
his list of the contents of AM 764 4to: “De Archiepiscopis Cantuariensibus
nonnulla med nockrum heilỏgum æfintirum.” It is of course conceivable
that two people would independently describe the texts on the bifolium
in such similar terms, but it seems likely that Thorkelin merely translated
Árni’s description.
Taken together, the simplest and most logical interpretation of the
evidence is that Thorkelin himself removed the bifolium from AM
764 4to. Someone in Thorkelin’s position – being the secretary of the
Arnamagnæan Commission and a prolific editor of Old Norse-Icelandic
texts – would have had easy access to Árni’s manuscripts. Although we can-
not fully know Thorkelin’s thought process, one can imagine that while pe-
rusing Árni Magnússon’s catalogue, the item listed as “De Archiepiscopis
39 The exceptions are f. 33v, which contains 48 lines written with a younger hand, f. 35v with
41 lines, and f. 36v with 39 lines. Although f. 36r now only has 39 lines of text, there were
originally 40. F. 37 has been either left partly unwritten or partly erased, but the prickings
in the margin clearly indicate that 40 lines were intended.
40 Svanhildur Óskarsdóttir, “Universal History,” 11–12.
ANECDOTES OF SEVERAL ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY