Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1980, Blaðsíða 86
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The masses 2 and 3 are interesting as witnesses to the manual tradition
of the Nidaros Province. While mass 2 is found in one of the oldest
Norwegian manual manuscripts, MS T, c. 1200-50, mass 3 has been
found only in a Norwegian manual fragment c. 1300;7 the Icelandic and
the Norwegian fragments are both witnesses to the Nidaros manual
tradition at an earlier stage than that of T.
The selection and adaptation of texts for these masses was certainly
not carried out in Norway or Iceland, but inherited from those who
brought Christianity to the North. We do not know how many
generations had copied and re-copied these texts before c. 1200, but
even so they offer us a glimpse of our very oldest liturgical tradition.
Icelandic manual fragments seem to be rare. Some texts may, however,
be recovered from vernacular translations. The Icelandic manuscript
Brit. Mus. Add. 11242 4° has been described by J. E>orkelsson.8 It
was the work of the well-known Icelandic Humanist Gottskålk
Jonsson, rector of Glaumbær (t 1593). Among the contents of this
manuscript, t»orkelsson quotes ‘formali yfer hionum nockr’9 (f. 47r), a
prayer for the spouses. The writer seems to have drawn on the
beginning and the end of the great nuptial benediction, ‘Deus qui
potestate virtutis tue’ (ManNor 22-23). The following transcription is
by Jon Helgason:
formali yfer hionum nockr
E>w gvd er med valldi og krapti t>inz blezada sonar skapader alla hivti
af engu efni hver er med hafv stormerki hivskapligt samband helgadi<r>
svo at kriz heilagr andi skylldi samteingaz mille kallmanz og
konu svo at bar af skylldi mannkynit avkaz j verolldine. bleza bv nv
bessi hion med b>ne blezadri hendi og myskunn svo bav elski big nott
og dag og j binv lofi standi bau og beirra logligar sambvder er bau hafa
7 The scribe of the Norwegian Lat. fragm. 1028 (= Man 1) wrote five more
manuscripts among which are a missal, a breviary, and an antiphoner, all in accordance
with the use of Nidaros. See ON, pp. 35-38.
8 J. Porkelsson, Islandske haandskrifter i England og Skotland: Arkiv for nordisk
filologi, 8 (Lund 1892), pp. 217-35.
9 Op. cit. p. 225.