Gripla - 2021, Blaðsíða 30

GRIPLA28
lines of text are missing on each side of fol. 2, with each lacuna being
equivalent to fifty-four lines in her edited text. The text of these two
legends in Stowe MS 980 would only fill about twenty-two lines in the
edition, and so they would easily fit in either lacuna. The contents of the
lacuna on the recto are, according to Fell, “fairly easy to conjecture” as both
before and after it Árni is following Adelard, but she found it more dif-
ficult to speculate on the contents of the second lacuna.63
Shortly before the second lacuna, Árni is following Adelard.64 He then
breaks off from Adelard’s text but indicates that a continuation “mun fra
uerda sagt. sidar j sỏgunne” (will be told later in the saga).65 This is fol-
lowed by a digression that is largely lost in the lacuna. Fell was not able to
identify Árni’s sources here but it is evident that he has started following
Eadmer. Árni begins by paraphrasing text from chapter six in Eadmer’s
Vita where Eadmer writes that Æthelhelm, archbishop of Canterbury, saw
that God would work wonders through Dunstan, although Æthelhelm is
in the Icelandic version referred to as “aller uitrer menn” (all wise men).66
After a chapter division in AM 180 b fol., Árni continues to follow
Eadmer’s Vita. Here we are told that Dunstan strove to “jdna stundvm
nytsamligt ok ueralligt uerk ueralldar. at fiandinn fynndi hann eigi *idiu-
lausann” (occupy himself now and then with useful and mundane, wordly
work, so that the devil would not find him idle),67 which finds a parallel in
Eadmer’s Vita: “Sciens quoque otiositatem inimicam animae esse, nunc is-
tis, nunc illis operibus intendebat” (And knowing idleness to be the enemy
of his soul he busied himself now with this, now with that occupation).68
Árni then adds a quote from Paul the apostle, which is cut short due to the
lacuna.
Eadmer does not include this quotation; instead, he proceeds to de-
63 Although Adelard’s text corresponding to the first lacuna only consists of ten lines of
printed text, Fell finds that “it is not impossible that Árni’s capacity for elaboration would
enable him to expand Adelard’s account to this extent, without adding greatly to its sub-
stance.” See Fell, “Introduction,” liv.
64 Fell, “Introduction,” xxiii.
65 Dunstanus saga, ed. Fell, 7.
66 Cf. Eadmer of Canterbury, Lives and Miracles of Saints Oda, Dunstan, and Oswald, eds. and
trans. Andrew J. Turner and Bernard J. Muir (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006),
58; Dunstanus saga, ed. Fell, 7.
67 Dunstanus saga, ed. Fell, 7.
68 Eadmer of Canterbury, Lives and Miracles, 58, 59.