Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1985, Side 89

81
Part was read much more often than the remainder of the book. The
only other visible evidence of use is a series of pencil marks obviously
due to the nineteenth-century editors. There are signs of exposure to
damp, but otherwise the binding would seem to have protected its
contents adequately.
The manuscript at present measures c. 27 x 18.5 cm, and the writ-
ten space, which has been lightly ruled throughout, measures c.
20 x 13 cm. Coloured initials are supplied in red at ff. lv, 2r, 2v
(twice), 4r and 12v; marginal cues for the guidance of the rubricator -
who may well have been the scribe himself - appear on ff. 2r, 4r, 5r
(twice; not executed) and 6r (twice; not executed, cf. plate Ila). That
such initials only occur in the Historia Norvegiae and the Orkney
Genealogy might imply that the scribe was deliberately imitating the
layout of his exemplars. Another prominent feature of these first two
articles, and especially of the Historia Norvegiae, is the use of display
script for purposes of emphasis, e.g. in connection with proper names
and breaks in the text (for this latter application see plate Ila). Depart-
ures from the scribe’s cursive norm are much rarer in the rest of the
volume: tall initials combined with display script introduce arts. 3 and
4 at ff. 18r and 18v; a tall initial appears without the accompaniment of
display script at the beginning of art. 5 (f. 23r, cf. plate III); and at the
beginning of arts. 7 and 8 on f. 24r the scribe indulges in the use of
florid initials and exaggerated ascenders and descenders (the transi-
tion from art. 7 to art. 8 is seen in plate Ilb). The decorative outburst
at f. 24 is due to the temporary shift at the ninth line of the page
(beginning of art. 7) from cursive writing to a set hånd of the kind
often found in late medieval notarial documents from Scotland, where
the use of such florid devices is conventional.
At f. 24v14 the normal cursive script is resumed, though the scribe
continues to mark off sections of his text with capitals of intermediate
size displaying occasional florid features. Apart from these remini-
scences of the notarial style, the script from f. 24v14 to the end is
absolutely identical with that of ff. lr-24r8, and I am not in doubt that
the whole manuscript is the work of one man. Scottish scribes of the
late Middle Ages were able to produce a variety of writing styles; this
must be the conclusion to be drawn from the example of Walter Small,
treasurer of Dunkeid in the early sixteenth century, who was praised
by Alexander Myln as the best living penman ‘in every style of writ-
6 Opuscula VIII