Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1970, Side 200

178
O originally occupied the innermost position in its gathering,
for the text on lv is continued on 2r. The outermost pages are
quite worn, including more than half of the extant text on 2v.
A hole is found in each leaf, one through Irl9,20-lvl8,19 and
another through 2rl9,20-2vl8-20. On every page the margins have
been used for writing exercises, identifiable words being Rad on lr,
gud (4 times) on lv, and Jpeim godum vaonnum sem Jaetta [bref sia
eda] heyra sendwm vier nef... on 2v. Folio lr contains 32 lines, lv 30,
2r 31 and 2v 30 lines. Ultraviolet light proved helpful in reading
difficult passages and was used in producing the facsimiles in this
article, viz. N lv and O 2v.
The fragments have been dated to the 15th century.2 If this is
true, then they were probably written in its last decades, although
it is possible that one or both manuscripts could date from the
beginning of the 16th century. To discuss this problem would be
idle until the paleography and language of datable Icelandic
material from ca. 1500 has been investigated more thoroughly.
When this has been done, it is hoped that the features listed below
will be of use for more exact datings in the future.
N contains a variety of graphic variants and abbreviations.3
Noteworthy are the four free variants of the letter r, the most
common being r-rotunda (e.g. harda lv8) and r-rotunda ending
in a hook to the right below the line (e.g. hardla lv7), both of
which can occur in all positions except initially. A small Capital r
is most common in word-initial position (Reis lv24), but is also
used for single r in other positions (e.g. -kiallaRa lr7, heyRdu lrl5,
dyRa 2r8; it also occurs in gemination (fyRa 2v33), but then more
often with a dot above it (fyå lr9, kyR 2r25, fyRa 2v3), and is
the only variant marked in the following edition. There also occur
nine examples of minuscule r (Aristotulis lr26, lærde lr27, meire
2 Kr. Kålund, Katalog over den Amamagnceanske Håndskriftsamling (København,
1888-94), I, 203-4, II, 111.
3 The scribe of N is identical with the scribe of the only extant parehment leaf
of Hrafnkels saga Freysgoda. For a detailed discussion of the hånd, see the intro-
duction to Peter Springborg’s forthcoming edition of this saga in Editiones Ama-
magnæanæ.