Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.10.1979, Síða 146
120
of Gvimars saga suggests that the text might derive from a Norwegian
manuscript. Clear examples of Norwegianisms are the absence of u-
mutation in omad og tendrast (7:14, see note), where one expects the
Icelandic forms omud og tendrud, and the incorrect reading å midiu
sumre (9:22), which suggests that the exemplar contained the Norwe-
gian an(d)værdu (a scribe read anu^du as amidiuT) rather than the
Icelandic ond-. Use of superscript r (normally representing -ar) for -ur
or -er, of which there are four instances in the saga, might be
interpreted as reflecting a Norwegian source that employed the
svarabhakti vowel -a-. This use of superscript r is not without
precedent, however, in Icelandic writings of the seventeenth century22.
A further anomaly in a manuscript from 1737 is the use of 6 on three,
and possibly four occasions (godvilia, 6:25; ad, 11:15; sijdan, 16:14;
perhaps also odru, 8:10, where what appears to be the stroke of -d-
might also be interpreted as the continuation of a diacritical mark over
the preceding letter, namely -6- [=o]). The occurrence of -d in ad,
however, speaks against an exemplar written prior to 1350.
A textual relationship between Gvimars saga in Lbs. 840 and
Gvimars saga in the no longer extant manuscript(s) of the Amamag-
næan collection is plausible. Our text and the manuscript(s) of
Gvimars saga mentioned in the old Arnamagnæan catalogue (see p. 108)
could either be copies of one and the same manuscript, or Gvimars
saga, Lbs. 840, could derive from an Arnamagnæan manuscript23.
Nonetheless, for the time being one can only speculate about the
exemplar of Gvimars saga in Lbs. 840.
22 See, Sagas of Icelandic Bishops. Early Icelandic Manuscripts in Facsimile, Vol.
VII (Copenhagen, 1967), col. 11.
23 Another text in Lbs. 840, Heidarviga saga, is a copy of a manuscript written by
Jon Olafsson frå Grunnavik. According to Sture Hast (Hardar saga, p. 145) this is no
doubt the manuscript now known as Lbs. 442 4to, which was written in Copenhagen,
but came to Iceland at an early stage.