Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1991, Page 173
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Jon ignored it. In contrast with this, and providing the most striking
illustration of the importance of 179, the latter does contain Eiriks saga
vihfprla, which is not to be found in S6. But there is evidence that S6
did formerly contain this saga; it must have disappeared from the
manuscript when a substantial number of leaves were lost from it at a
later time. With these two exceptions S6 and 179 contain the same
sagas, though not in the same order.
For the position of recent scholarship on matters mentioned in these
opening paragraphs, cf. Marianne E. Kalinke, Mottuls saga, Editiones
Arnamagnæanæ B 30 (1987) pp. XCIX-CII, and references there.
The history of 179 is not fully known, but at some stage it was
exposed to damp, which affected the margins of many pages and
caused some loss of words or letters. The spine was seriously affected;
many bifolia split into separate leaves. The manuscript has also
suffered the complete loss of a large number of leaves in a lacuna after
f. 159, as can be seen from the texts. It is also noteworthy that ff. 160-
189 were for a period separated from the rest of the manuscript, and
were kept in the library of the University of Copenhagen under their
own shelfmark (Add. 18 fol.).
The manuscript was extensively restored and rebound in 1963-66,
making it readily usable again. Photographs were taken before and
after this work; they show how necessary it was, and record a few details
that have been lost in the process. The opportunity was also taken, as is
the practice, to make notes about the leaves, which were single and
which conjugate. These notes, made on this occasion by Agnete Loth,
are particularly valuable in this instance, because it is not possible to
see in the present binding which leaves are conjugate, and because in
some places during the restoration leaves have been joined together
and gatherings of varying size created in a manner that might be
thought to be standard (8 leaves), or was convenient or necessary (3, 4,
6 and 11 all occur), but which does not reproduce the original condi-
tion of the manuscript.
The manuscript itself provides other evidence, apparendy not
previously noticed, which in combination with the notes about which
leaves are conjugate makes it possible to determine how the gatherings
were originally, and how the sagas fitted into them. This in turn has a
bearing on the difference in the order of the sagas in 179 and S6.
The first three lines of Agnete Loth’s notes record that ff. 1-35 were