Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.10.1979, Side 171

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Trampe Bodtker published a brief investigation which presented a
different view of the value of the S46 text14. Bodtker did not try to
establish whether the texts in S46 did really derive from O, but he
pointed out that JV’s Bevers saga ultimately stems from an early text,
and he seems to suggest that, despite its enormous idiosyncracies, it
contains original readings that are not preserved in S6, S7 or the
fragments15.
We have been able to argue that JV almost certainly copied at least
parts of his Bevers saga text from O, but if we are to use his copy as
evidence about O the first question we must ask is: How faithfully did
he reproduce his exemplar? Did he perhaps make some of the changes
to the text himself? Cederschiold’s comment, quoted above, is typical
of the opinion that was current before the turn of the century that JV
was both an unreliable and individualistic scribe. This view has since
been revised, and not very long ago he was described as, “neither
worse nor better than the majority of his contemporaries ..(EdAM
A8, xxi). This assessment in faet answers quite well to what we can
establish about JV’s treatment of Bevers saga. We can see that he
tended to reproduce words of high semantic content (the nine words in
F.d.9) and the accuracy of his copying of the steinpro passage shows
that he was capable of giving an exact rendering of the full lexis of his
exemplar. The main impression gained on reading the text is, nonethe-
less, that the scribe is inattentive, frequently careless and basically un-
interested in what he is copying. Evidence on Partalopa saga shows
that JV was capable, either deliberately or accidentally, of missing out
a whole sentence16, and the same thing has happened at least once in
Bevers saga. There is reason to suspect that some of the Bevers text’s
deficiences are his responsibility, but there is nothing to suggest that
JV was the man to waste time reworking the integral contents of his
14 A. Trampe Bodtker, “Ivens Saga und Bevis Saga in Cod. Holm. Chart. 46, fol.”,
H. Paul und W. Braune, Beitråge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur
XXXI (Halle, 1906), 261-71.
15 A detailed discussion of this and other issues conceming the S46 text will be
published elsewhere in connection with a new edition of Bevers saga.
16 The faet that the dictionary citation medh samma hotti sem forr cannot be placed
in JV’s text of Partalopa saga in S46 (see JL-JEnoks, 227) appears to imply that a whole
sentence, cf. the A text EdAM, 86.41-43, has been omitted.
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