Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.2003, Page 179
IB 180 8vo
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36.13, ‘sumaR’ 40.6, ‘PoRoddur’ 85.12, ‘EpteR ... PoRolfs’ 106.11,
‘SnoRe’ 110.9). Non-initially, r usually has its rotunda form (;). The
standard (r) occurs occasionally, sometimes, in Hånd i, alongside ro-
tunda e g ‘jjeina’ 1.8, ‘£>ehrå’ 53.6, ‘Snotri’ 74.9 and sometimes in the
display script of Hånd ii, e g ‘Geyr Rydur’ 12.5, ‘Snorre Porgrymsson’
26.9, and it makes more frequent appearances about halfway through
the text, though usually only in the combination ar, e g ‘miklar’ 113.3,
‘sumarid’ 113.3, ‘vard’ 115.3, ‘{jar’1 115.6, ‘jjar’ 115.20, ‘gardi’ 116.1,
and then only briefly. A form of the Latin cøn-abbreviation, looking like
a q or the numeral 4, is used in eg (qa> ‘qona’ 34.14, (qt> ‘qonur’
34.15. For figures, mostly Hindu-Arabic numerals are used, but (c) rep-
resents 100 in :ccc: 125.17.
The main differences in the palaeography of the two hånds are as fol-
lows:
In Hånd i, f almost always has the insular form (p) though the Car-
olingian shape (f> occasionally appears. Hånd ii prefers Carolingian (f),
but (p) occasionally occurs, without significant distribution, h occurs
both in a Roman and an italic (German) form, as ‘hlaupu’ 17.18. Hånd
ii does not have the italic variant. There are some distinctive graphs in
Hånd ii: an initial (r) left open at the top, a tall s as well as a somewhat
florid initial round s, and a form of t used initially, which has a flat top
and rounded foot. The most thoroughgoing difference between the
hånds is that while in Hånd i the base of the r rotunda consists of a hori-
zontal stroke (the letter thus resembling 2), in Hånd ii it is the head that
consists of a horizontal stroke (the letter thus resembling 7). The letter ø
(the grapheme corresponding to Modem Icelandic 6) is found in three
forms in Hånd i; in the commonest its oblique stroke is kept outside the
circle itself and appears at the top right and bottom left; sometimes at
the top right only e g ‘gøngu’ 68.9, ‘føng’ 68.19, ‘høfda’ 116.9 and, oc-
casionally, it can be written (o), as ‘hogg’ 206.16. In ø by Hånd ii the
oblique stroke passes right through the circle, as ‘hølid’ 93.7; long o in
Hånd i is usually indicated by doubling, sometimes by a single dot e g
‘for’ 105.4, occasionally by a double dot e g ‘bio’ 183.17, whereas <o>
is more common for long o in Hånd ii, and (oo) is rare.
Abbreviations Most of the traditional abbreviating symbols appear: e g
the standard er sign (’->, superscript r rotunda for ur, the bar for a fol-
lowing n/m. Occasionally ur and er symbols are confused: ‘mollduger’