Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.10.1979, Blaðsíða 144
118
the Norwegian nor Icelandic redactions - in part to the general
prologue of the Strengleikar, the epilogue to Gvimars saga is neither a
translation of the one nor a revision of the other. Instead, the epilogue
to Gvimars saga is the kind of authorial diatribe and apologia not
infrequent in the Old Norse-Icelandic romances, such as Pidriks saga
af Bem or Bragda-Mågus saga. It seems not unlikely that the
prologue to the Strengleikar inspired the epilogue to Gvimars saga. In
any case, its language does not preclude composition as recent as the
seventeenth or early eighteenth century.
Gvimars saga is found on leaves 292r:23-299v:15 of the paper
manuscript Lbs. 840, 4to. The leaves are closely cropped. Pagination
was added at some point and the saga is located on pp. 594-609. Lbs.
840, 4to was written by several different scribes20 and Gvimars saga is
written in two different hånds, pp. 594-96 in a cursive hånd, and pp.
597-609 in neat print-writing. The orthography is not consistent
throughout, and contains alternate forms: fviad/fviat, ad/at, nockud/
nockut, bued/buid, seigia/segia, villde/villdi, and the like. The first
example in each pair is the more common and therefore the model here
for all expansions of superscripts. As a rule, scribe 1 uses two parallel
vertical lines to indicate syllable division at the end of a line, scribe 2
employs parallel horizontal lines. Generally, the saga is reasonably
punctuated with full stops (a virgule is used by scribe 1, a period by
scribe 2) and half stops. There is one exception to the system of setting
ofif clauses through use of punctuation marks: a few stops seem to
serve no other purpose than to separate one word from the next.
Punctuation in the transcript below follows the manuscript. The only
change relative to orthography in this edition of Gvimars saga pertains
to capitalization, which is profuse and seems unrelated to punctuation.
Frequently Capital and small letters are indistinguishable. Except for
proper names and capitals occurring in the manuscript after a full stop,
the text has been normalized in favor of small initial letters. In a few
instances the text of Gvimars saga is certainly corrupt, but any
editorial emendations of the text have been duly noted (e.g. 4:37).
Guiamars Ijod and Gvimars saga derive not only from the same ori-
20 Sture Hast gives a full description of Lbs. 840, 4to in Hardar saga. II. Pappers-
handskrifterna (Copenhagen: Einar Munksgaard, 1960), pp. 145-47. Also published as
Vol. XXIII of Bibliotheca Amamagnæana.