Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1943, Blaðsíða 78

44
which, incidentally, it almost agrees verbatim, appears with certainty
from the two following passages1:
RS 830-31
Historiis autem conscribendis
ducentesimus quadragesimus
post annus initium fecit.
RS g10'11
Tum qvia ipsi (o: poetæ)
rebus gerendis intererant.
OH 420-21
bat var meir en .cc. vetra xii
ræS er Island var byggt, åSr
menn tæki hér sqgur at rita.
OH 55
En |>ar er skåldin våru i orrost-
um, [)å eru tcek vitni beira.
Both these items of information are lacking in the prologue to the
Heimskringla. Thus the vvhole of the above-mentioned passage cor-
responds to OH 420-59 in a somewhat revised form. borlåkur arrives
at the year 1114 (p. 834) by adding 240 to 874 without taking into
account OH’s “meir en” (more than).
Which manuscript of OH was known to Bishop borlåkur cannot
be conclusively settled. Of the manuscripts now known which have
preserved this passage from the prologue, Stockh. Perg. 4to No. 2
can be left out of consideration as that manuscript had long been
out of Iceland in 1647; likewise Bæjarbok and Codex Resenianus,
which in OH 421 read .cc. vetra tiræS. In AM 325 VI, 4to the first
leaf is defective so that this very passage in the prologue is missing,
but it must be supposed to have been there (see OH 929). The
fragment AM 921, 4to has the passage; further, the prologue has
originally been included in a number of manuscripts which are now
defective, see OH 1126-27. None of these manuscripts can, however,
be connected with Bishop borlåkur, but of most of them it is true
that he m a y very well have used them. He himself does not seem
to have possessed the manuscript of OH in question but merely to
have known some copies of it (RS io20).
— 922-/o2. This addition conceming the introduction of Chris-
tianity into Iceland seems in the main to have been derived from
Arngrimur Jånsson (Brevis comm. p. 57V, and Crymogæa p. 104) ;
the erroneous statement that the priest bangbrandr was a Norwegian
1 The saga of St. Olaf (OH) is quoted from the edition of O. A. Johnsen
and Jon Helgason, Oslo 1930-41.