Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.10.1979, Blaðsíða 167
141
The seventeenth century collections of dictionary excerpts, many of
which have page and sometimes even line references to the manu-
scripts from which they are taken, have been used so far in four publi-
cations that attempt to establish the arrangement and lengths of the
sagas in O, and to show that many of them are preserved in copies
made by the Icelander Jon Vigfusson (JV) between 1690 and 1691 for
Antikvitetskollegiet in Stockholm4. There exist today copies made by
JV of all but Parcivals saga of the seven works listed above, and they
are distributed amongst three manuscripts: Ivents saga, Erex saga,
Bevers saga and Partalopa saga in Stockholm Papp. fol. 46 (S46);
Mirmants saga in Papp. fol. 47 (S47) and “Enoks saga” in Papp. fol.
66. It has not yet been proved that all these works derive from O. I
will show that JV almost certainly copied parts, and in faet probably
copied all, of Bevers saga from O. This will involve a brief discussion
of the character of JV’s copying and of the nature of the text in S46. I
will also show that the order in which the sagas were written in O was
not the order given in Verelius’s Index, and that Ivents saga occupied
some of the space previously thought to be occupied by Mirmants
saga. The article has three main sections which deal with Bevers saga,
Ivents saga and Mirmants saga, and Erex saga respectively.
I. Bevers saga.
Foster Blaisdell has argued that JV’s copy of Erex saga in S46
almost certainly derives from O5. In JL-JEnoks (p. 227n.) it is stated
that editors working on Ivents saga (Foster Blaisdell) and Partalopa
saga (Lise Præstgaard Andersen) have evidence that JV also copied
these works from O. There is no published information of this type
concerning Bevers saga, but Lise Præstgaard Andersen gives two
4 V. Godel, “Ormr Snorrasons bok”, in Nordiska studier tillegnade Adolf Noreen
(Uppsala, 1904), 357-74 (hereafter GodOS); Sven A. Grén Broberg, “Ormr Snorrasons
bok’’, Arkiv for nordisk filologi 24 (1908), 42-66 (hereafter BrobOS); EdAM A8,
passim; Jonna Louis-Jensen, “»Enoks saga«”, Opuscula V, Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana
XXXI (1975), 225-37 (hereafter ih-lEnoks).
5 Foster Blaisdell ed., Erex saga Artuskappa, Editiones Amamagnæanæ B19 (1965),
xxxi-xxxiii (hereafter EdAM B19). Thorkil Damsgaard Olsen suggests in a review of
EdAM B19 that Blaisdell has not produced sufficient evidence for this conclusion
(Mediaeval Scandinavia 1 (1968), 217-19). A small amount of new material relevant
to this issue is given below, p. 155.