Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.10.1977, Side 208

III. THE TEXT OF MORKTX SKINN A IN H-HK.
1. The manti scripts o f Morkinskinna.
The fullest text of Msk. to have been preserved is in MS 01. kgl. sml. 1009 fol.
(MskMS). This manuscript is assigned to the end of ti le thirteenth century; it has
several lacunae and lacks the conclusion, but is assumed to have extended to the
year 1177, as do Fagrskinna and Hkr.
Msk. is also preserved in two otlier (fragmentary) manuscripts: these are a) the
later part of Flateyjarbok (YFlb.), and b) AM 325 IVd and XI,3 4to. YFlb. con-
sists of three gatherings, which were inserted into Flb. in the seeond half of the
iifteenth century and eontain the sagas of Magnus the Good and Harald hardrddi
(i.e. about half of Msk.). 325 consists of two fragments, eacli of two leaves, from
a manuscript of the seeond half of the fourteenth century — probably the very
manuscript from which YFlb. was transcribed.
2. The relationsliip betueen the manuscripts.
Gustav Indrebe demonstrated in his Fagrskinna (Kristiania 1917) that Fagrskinna
and Msk. derive from the same lost source, which he calls “den eldste Morkin-
skinna”. This ‘oldest’ Msk. lacked the interpolations from Agrip and probably
some or even all of the pættir found in the extant Msk. The archetype of the ex-
tant manuscripts of Msk. is here called Msk2.
The Msk. text in H-Hr. must likewise derive from Msk2; and although it has
been subjected to fairly extensive redaetional alteration, sufficient examples can
be produced of secondary readings shared by this text with YFlb. for it to be
regarded as certain that YFlb. (/325) and *H go back to a common source (pp.
70--71). On the other hånd, MskMS contains errors which were not present in this
common source (m), from which it follows that MskMS and m were sister texts:
Msk 2
MskMS m
*H
325-YFlb.
H Hr.
In the light of this stemma, readings peculiar to YFlb. can be classified as
secondary when H-Hr. agrees with MskMS. However, this rule can only be applied
unconditionally in cases where we have to do with text-variants in the strict sense
of the term; YFlb. lacks six pættir which are present in both MskMS and H-Hr.,
and although the most likely explanation of this State of affairs is that YFlb.
deliberately omitted them, the possibility cannot be entirely ruled out that MskMS
and H-Hr. incorporated them independently of one another. But the faet that
there are fewer pættir in YFlb. cannot in itself be accepted as evidence that the
pættir were incorporated into Msk. in successive stages, as has sometimes been
argued.
■3. The text of Msk. in Godex Frisianus (MskY).
F contains a series of interpolations from a Msk2 text (cf. the list on pp. 87-88),
and among these are all the Msk. interpolations occurring in the y-class of Hkr.
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