Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1959, Blaðsíða 47

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A by Unger. It contains branches I and III-VII of the saga, but breaks
off before the end of the seventh branch. There are also extensive lacunae
elsewhere in the text, and it is not possible to decide how much has been
lost at the end.
2. The vellum MS no. 180 a, fol. in the same collection, written in
the 15th century3, called a by Unger. It contains branches I and III—VIII
of the saga. The rest of this MS is preserved in no. 180 b, fol., and contains
a number of romantic sagas and Saints’ Lives. 180 b, fol. begins with
Konråds saga k eis aras onar, but the first part of it is lost. 180 a, fol. ends
with the word fjåndmonnum (Unger’s ed. p. 5316), only three lines be-
fore the end of the eighth branch according to the MSS B and b. Since
this point is of some importance for the textual history of the saga, I have
asked Professor Jon Helgason, Keeper of the Arnamagnæan Collection,
if there is any evidence that the branch really ended here in this MS. He
writes as follows: “AM 180 a, fol., which ends with the word fiandmon-
num, seems to be defective. The last word stands at the bottom of the
page, in the last line, and there is nothing to indicate that it is the end
(sc. of the l>dttr, or the saga). The last gathering of the MS is complete,
and consists of 8 leaves, and there is nothing missing at the beginning of
the gathering. It seems unlikely, if the scribe knew he was near the end of
the påttr, that he should not have attempted to find room for the last
few lines, but the writing on the last page is of the usual size; there are,
however, 45 lines on the page, although there normally seem to be 44.
What follows fiandmonnum in the edition would fill two lines in the
MS”4.
The missing part of the beginning of Konråds saga in 180 b, fol. would
fill something like 11 or 12 leaves, i.e. one and a half normal gatherings.
Thus we do not know what the other half of one of these gatherings
contained, and we cannot ascertain how much has been lost between the
last preserved gathering of Kms and the beginning of Konråds saga. The
few additional words at the end of branch VIII in the MSS B and b are
quite unimportant and may be an addition in the Bb version only. All
that can be said about this question here is that it is unlikely that the saga
originally ended in this place in 180 a. Årni Magnusson acquired the MS
in Iceland, and it had already been divided into many pieces, which he got
3 Unger p. xxxvii, Kålund p. 146.
4 Letter, May 1953.
3 Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana, XIX