Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1970, Side 291

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the first leaf is intact, and the top half of it contains a statement,
of a type familiar from other manuscripts also, to the effect that
the manuscript is from the coUection of Bogi Benediktsson. It can
hardly be doubted that there was once a similar statement in
L2796, and that in both cases the gathering of four leaves at the
beginning has been added by Bogi Benediktsson of StaSarfell.
There are sixteen items in the manuscript, some of them paginated
separately, others together, and four not at all. The sagas or groups
of associated sagas fit neatly into the gatherings, which are normally
of 8 leaves but are adjusted to 10, 6 or 4 according to the amount
of text to be accommodated. Various parts of the manuscript
were produced independently of each other, and their order could
have been altered at will.
On f. Ir there is a note which begins: Bole pessi er slerifud af
Conredor Halldori Hiålmarssyni. This is Halldor Hjålmarsson,
1745-1805, conrector of the school at Holar (I.Æ. II, 256-257).
Like other manuscripts written by the same scholarly man,
L2796 is pro vided with an ampie margin in which variants could
be written if another manuscript came to hånd. At the end of each
section of pagination and at the end of each unpaginated item
there is a note about the exemplar used for the text, and about
the source of the variants if there are any. An example of such
a note has been printed from Lbs 355, 4to in Hernings påttr
Åslåkssonar, ed. Gillian Fellows Jensen, Ed. Arnam. Series B,
vol. 3, 1962, p. xlv.
Hrolfs saga kraka is the second item in L2796, occupying ff.
29-65. The note about it that follows on the next page begins:
Saga pesse er telcin ur bole Prentarans sal. P. J. S. hvar hun var med
hende Marcusar Porlafcss(onar), and continues with comments on
the quality of the exemplar and with suggested corrections. The
PJS referred to must be Pétur Jonsson, who was the head printer
at Holar for some years, until he left there in 1780. He died in
1792, so this is the earliest possible date for the note in L2796,
and also for the text of the saga in L2796 as there is no reason
to suppose that there was any gap in time between them.
In 1791, after a period of decline at the press, Pétur Jonsson
investigated its condition for the bishop. Another man who took
part in this survey was a type-setter named Markus Horlåksson,