Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.10.1979, Blaðsíða 134
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Ijod, the Norwegian translation of Bisclavret and the fourth of the
Strengleikar. The first tale in the Strengleikar collection, Guiamars
Ijod, also was known in Iceland. In a list entitled “Fabulæ, qvæ mihi
in chartis sunt”, Åmi Magnusson himself recorded a Gvimars saga
(AM 435a, 4to, 168v)7, and the catalogue of the Arnamagnæan
Collection in Copenhagen attests that the manuscript AM 588, 4to at
one time contained either one or two copies of Gvimars saga8. The
manuscript is no longer extant and it is therefore not possible to de-
termine whether Årni Magnusson’s Gvimars saga was a copy of
Guiamars Ijod. The name Gvimars saga also recurs in several lists of
saga literature of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In
chapter I of Series Dynastarum et Regum Daniæ (Copenhagen,
1702), Thormodus Torfæus enters Gvimars saga in a list of works he
either had consulted himself or about which he knew from the testi-
mony of friends (p. 5). Two works published in the year 1777 know of
the existence of the saga: Uno von Troil mentions it in Bref rorande en
resa til Island (p. 154) and Hålfdan Einarsson enters Gvimars saga as
a tale Gvimari, eqvitio [for eqvitis] Angli in his Sciagraphia Historiæ
Literariæ Islandiæ (p. 103). Peter Erasmus Muller repeats the
information in volume III of his Sagabibliothek (1820), in an index of
translated and indigenous Icelandic romances (p. 482). An unpub-
lished manuscript from 1824 (located in the Fiske Icelandic Collection
at Comell University), Uppteiknunar Tilraun Islendskra Skålda og
Rithofunda by Hallgrimur Jonsson contains the entry Gvimari (:
Riddara å Englandi) in an alphabetical list of sagas (p. 28)9. It is not
implausible that the various references to Gvimars saga are based on
direct or indirect acquaintance with the Arnamagnæan manuscript(s). In
his study of 1921, Angevin Britain and Scandinavia, Henry Goddard
Leach included the name Guimar under the matter of Britain in a
7 See Arne Magnussons i AM. 435 A-B, 4to indeholdte håndskriftfortegnelser med
to tillæg. Kommissionen for det Amamagnæanske Legat (Copenhagen: Gyldendalske
Boghandel. Nordisk Forlag, 1909), p. 54.
8 The following statement is found in the Katalog over den Amamagnæanske Hånd-
skriftsamling, vol. I (Copenhagen, 1889): Ifg. den gamle katalog skulde AM. 588, 4to
endvidere indeholde “af Flores og Blantzeflur. Gvimars Saga 2 Exemp. ” men disse
findes nu ikke her. (p. 753).
9 See Halldor Hermannsson, Catalogue of the Icelandic Collection Bequeathed by
Willard Fiske (Ithaca, N.Y.: Comell University Library, 1914), p. 300.