Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1957, Page 363
GRONLANDIA
343
We may note that P. H. Resen owned a second manuscript of
Gronlandia besides A; this manuscript was in the collection which
he donated to the University Library in Copenhagen (see Petri
Joh. Resenii bibliotheca, 1685, p. 151; Kr. Kålund, Arne Mag-
nussons håndskriftfortegnelser, 1909, p. 111), but nothing is
otherwise known of it and it was destroyed in the great fire of
1728.
On the subject of the Icelandic translation reference may
otherwise be made to J6n Helgason’s discussion in Monum.
typogr. Isl. VI. Its importance for the textual criticism of Gron-
landia lies essentially in the confirmation it gives of the existence
of a manuscript in Iceland containing many of C’s peculiar read-
ings, thus demonstrating still further the existence of a third
copy of the author’s autograph independent of A and B. It may
finally be noted that at the end of the translation is given an
Icelandic rendering of the sailing directions, which appear in as
full a form as in A (C has them in a somewhat abridged form).
From this we may conclude that the original of the C-class con-
tained them in the same shape as A.
Relationship between the manuscrlpts. A casual glance at the
critical apparatus will show that in a number of cases A has
errors where B and C have the correct text, see e.g. the variants
to II 22911, 2319, 23614, 24316'21, 2441, 2515'26-27, 2571, 26224,
26420; cf. also those omissions in A which in our text have been
made good from BC, e.g. 2313, 238”, 2427, 25212-16. The last
omission seems to result from a conscious abridgment in A, since
the sentence there ends thus: “qvodqve reliqvum ævi in Norvegia
transegerunt (i.e. Thormodus, Scuffo and others), et Thormo-
dus qvidem cum Olao Crasso”. The text is not meaningless (cf.
Jån Helgason, op. cit. 13), but rather it seems as if the descrip-
tion of PormåSr’s last battie has been left out on purpose, as
irrelevant to his adventures in Greenland. The original text is
undoubtedly preserved in BC.
In other cases B and C differ both from A and from each
other. One of the most important instances is at the end of ch.
VII. After the account of PormåSr Kolbrunarskåld and Kroka-
Refr and their experiences in Greenland the chapter ends in A
with these words: “Sed hæc justo prolixiora . . . tertium etiam