Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1980, Side 27

I
Fragment of a Late Tenth-Century English Missal
Stockholm Kungl. Bibi. hl. perg. 8:o, no. 8 (see Godel, p. 113), is a
manuscript written c. 1550.1 It contains a fragmentary copy of the
Jonsbok, the Icelandic law-book in use since its adoption by the
Althing in 1281. On the first leaf, left blank by the scribe, are an
owner’s note, ‘Jon E>ordar son A bessa Bok med riettu’, and a receipt
from a certain GuObrandur t>orsteinsson on behalf of the children of
his late brother Finnur, both added in the seventeenth century. How
and when the manuscript arrived in Sweden is not known.
The manuscript is bound in wooden boards, covered in leather.
Fragments of two leaves from a missal were used as paste-downs at
the inside of the front and back cover. ‘Arne Ketilson’ is written upside
down on the front cover paste-down (f. 2r) in a modem hånd.
From a reconstruction of the texts missing between the recto and the
verso pages, the leaves, when whole, would seem to have contained c.
25 lines to the page, with the written space measuring c. (24)xl5/16
cm, mied with the hard point. The rubrics are in red, in a mixture of
majuscule and minuscule letters; initials in red or green; punctuation is
by the median point. There are few abbreviations, even that of the
compendium -orum is avoided. One word-accent is found, over hlc, in
line 8 of f. (2)r. Except for the Caroline ampersand, which is also
found in the endings of words, e.g. exultet, conciliet, the only ligature
used is that of st, in line 12 of f. (2)r combining two words,
sanctificationis tue. Letter-forms such as the nicked g, the triangular
a, reminiscent of the square Anglo-Saxon minuscule, as also the
spelling of propos sito (f. lv) indicate an Anglo-Caroline origin. The
1 Godel dated it c. 1450. However, the same scribe also wrote a charter, dated at
Eidar (Mul.), 1549 (DI 10, pp. 716-17), and MS AM 84 8°, also connected with the
Mulasysla, diocese of Skålholt (see Kålund, AM 2, p. 384). This identification was
made by Stefan Karlsson.