Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1996, Side 218
Melkolfs saga ok Salomons konungs
John Tucker
AM 696 4to III comprises two leaves, the first containing part of a text
which has come to be called Melkolfs saga ok Salomons konungs,' the
second preserving part of an abbreviated version of Plåcidus saga.
Both the first and last pages have suffered damage, apparently from
rubbing along a fold line. In consequence both leaves are in places dif-
ficult to read or completely illegible. Kålund dates the single hånd in
which both leaves are written to ca. 1400.
The Plåcidus saga text is printed in Unger’s Heilagra Manna Søgur
II, pp. 209-10.1 2 It is also included as version D in my edition of
Plåcidus saga,3 together with a discussion of the paleographic and
orthographic features of the entire MS fragment. Melkolfs saga ok
Salomons konungs has been edited only once, by Jess H. Jackson in
1952.4 Despite the inherent interest of this unexampled text, it has
attracted little scholarly attention, apart from Jackson’s own excursus
on its possible origins and narrative affiliations. Kirsten Wolf, contra
Finnur Jonsson in his Den oldnorske og oldislandske litteraturs historie,
has recently argued for the connection between this text and the Dia-
logus Salomonis et Marcolfi, a composite work comprising two parts of
uncertain origin, which enjoyed considerable vernacular success
throughout Europe including Iceland, where some 20 MSS survive
dating from the mid-fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries.5
1 Kålund’s note that it is usually (sædv[anligvis]) called Markolfs saga ok Salomons kon-
ungs is unexplained. Kr. Kålund, Katalog over den Amamagnæanske håndskriftsamling.
2 vols. (København 1888-94), vol. 2, p. 111.
2 C.R. Unger, ed. Heilagra Manna Søgur. 2 vols. (Christiania 1877).
3 Editiones Arnamagnæanæ B vol. 31 (forthcoming).
4 Jess H. Jackson, “Melkolfs saga ok Salomons Konungs”, Studies in Honor of Albert
Morey Sturtevant. University of Kansas Publications, Humanistic Studies 29 (Lawrence
1952), pp. 107-18.
5 Kirsten Wolf, “Some comments on Melkolfs saga ok Salomons konungs”, Maal og
Mimre 1990 (Oslo 1990), pp. 1-9. See also Hubert Seelow, “Markolfs saga og Salomons:
Salomon und Markolf” in his Die islåndischen Ubersetzungen der deutschen Volks-
biicher. Stofnun Ama Magnussonar å Islandi, Rit 35 (Reykjavik 1989), pp. 163-74.