Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.10.1960, Page 202

190
(pp. 101 ff. and pp. 103f.). 459 contains the draft of Sveinbjorn Egilsson’s
treatment of the verses of Hard. in Lexicon Poeticum. 1770 contains
an insignificant number of variants from the Holar edition of A. D.
1756 and from 498, and 1771 the same from the Holar edition and from
556. 1193 contains the text of Hard. from 556 with variants from five
mss, there called a, b, c, d and e. The author shows on pp. 115 ff. that
these mss are 499, 147, AM 160 or 498, 217 and 153 respectively.
Two mss containing the text of Hard., which belonged to bishop
Hans Peder Resen, were destroyed in the fire of Copenhagen in 1728.
The author thinks that one of these was *A or a copy of it (pp. 178f.).
In a separate section, pp. 122-179, the author discusses the circum-
stances of the origin of the mss, the scribes of them, the places where
they were written, the time for the writing of them, etc. Here an
account is also given of the history of the mss, and problems concerning
many other mss are dealt with at the same time. The many problems of
detail which are discussed there, cannot be recounted here, but some of
the more important results may be mentioned.
On pp. 136f. the author establishes that 4868 was made the basis for
the printing of all the texts in “Agiætar Fornmanna Søgur” (Holar 1756),
and that from it were printed some of the texts in “Nockrer Marg-Froo-
der Søgu-I>ætter Islendinga” (Holar 1756). The author establishes that
239 was written by sira Oddur Jonsson (p. 142), that 499 was owned by
Årni Håkonarson of Vatnshorn (p. 138), and that 840 was written for
Bjarni Pétursson riki of Skard (p. 146). 1758 is identical with the text of
Hard. which was previously in AM 553, 4:o (p. 161 f.). The author is
inclined to attribute 217 to sira Olafur Gislason of Hof, and he shows
that 6 was written in the north of Iceland—perhaps for bishop Gisli
Porlåksson—and was owned by the well-known collector, Jon Eggerts-
son (pp. 157 and 169 ff.).
In a synthesis at the end, pp. 180-184, it is established that the handing
down of Hard. in paper mss began in the 1620’s. The prototypes for all
the groups A, B and C and the oldest extant ms (4) were probably writ-
ten in the 1630’s. Probably the greatest number of paper mss in Iceland
came into existence in the 1660’s, but mss of Hard. were still being writ-
ten in the 18th century, and even as late as 1886. It is also shown that
most of the mss were written in south and west Iceland, a fairly large
number in Copenhagen, some for Formodur Torfason, and some in
Stockholm, and that for the most part the writers were priests, or men