Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1985, Qupperneq 75

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1. ff. lr-12r: “Ystoria Norwegie.” First printed in Munch, Symbolæ, pp. 1-18;
cf. The Bannatyne Miscellany III, 33-34 (brief extract), and Storm,
Monumenta, pp. 69-124 (critical text), 203-24 (diplomatic transcript).
2. ff. 12v-17v: Genealogy of the Orkney earls. First printed in Wallace, An
Account of the Islands of Orkney, pp. 121-38; cf. Munch, Symbolæ, pp. 18-
26, The Bannatyne Miscellany III, 61-85 and 189-91, and various other
editions.
3. f. 18r-18vu: List of the kings of Norway. First printed in Munch, Symbolæ,
pp. 26-27; cf. Storm, Monumenta, pp. 183-86 (with parallel Old Norse text
from a manuscript of c. 1400; cf. Storm, introduction pp. LIIII-LVI).
4. ff. 18v12-23r18: “The Cronycle of Scotland In a part.” Printed in The Ban-
natyne Miscellany III, 35-42.
5. f. 23rI9-23v: “Cronica antiqua diuersarum cronicarum origo.” Printed here
in Appendix I. This text breaks off unfinished at the bottom of f. 23v, where
there is a lacuna of uncertain extent (see section IV below).
6. f. 24r1-8: Conclusion of a Caithness charter dated 1373. Printed in The
Bannatyne Miscellany III, 43. The beginning of this text is lost in the lacuna
which interrupts art. 5.
7. f. 24r9"23: “De Johanne Ballialo etc.” Printed in The Bannatyne Miscellany
III, 43.
8. ff. 24r24-35v: “Nomina ... Regum Scotorum ... vsqwe ad Jacobum secundum
Regem Scocie.” Extract (omitting ff. 25-27 and part of ff. 24v and 28r)
printed in The Bannatyne Miscellany III, 44-60.
From this analysis it appears that the material in the extant part of
the manuscript is approximately evenly distributed between Norse
affairs (in the first half) and Scottish affairs (in the second half).42
Munch proposed to explain the contents of the whole compilation as
reflecting the personality of Earl William Sinclair, who, as earl of
Orkney confirmed in his title in 1434 and as Lord Chancellor of Scot-
land from 1454, had official interests in his native Scotland as well as in
the Norse earldom which he had inherited; and it is indeed altogether
likely that the first three articles were transmitted through the agency
of the Sinclair family, though the Dalhousie text definitely postdates
Earl William’s surrender of his island possessions to the Scottish
crown in 1470. It is known that an exemplar of the Historia Norvegiae
was to be found in Kirkwall in the first half of the fifteenth century, for
42 For art. 2 cf. n. 22 above and DNXX, 1 (1915), pp. 120-28, no. 833, where a very
full list of nineteenth-century editions, extracts and translations is given in the headnote.
For art. 6 see Crawford (as n. 21), p. 174, where a more detailed study of this fragmen-
tary text is announced.
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