Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.2003, Síða 188
174
Forrest S. Scott
GuSrun Sveinsdottir, bom ca 1663, is possibly the ‘Gud Run’ men-
tioned on p. 172 as “asking for studs” on p. 220 in Z, but the ‘[.?.]steim
magnus [son]’ (Steinn?, Porsteinn?) in the same entry is unidentified.
‘Porolfur Ara son’ is reasonably identified as Porolfur Arason of Fitj-
ar (BorgarfjarSarsysla) and Sibum uli (Myrasysla), of whom, as far as
chronology is concemed, it is known that his first wife died in 1753 and
that his grandfather SigurSur Arason died in 1707.20
Jon Jorundsson, to whom Porlåkur Jonsson lent the book, could be
the farm-hand mentioned in the census of 1703 at Kjalardalur in Borg-
arfjarøarsysla.21
V. Relation of Z to other manuscripts
The text of Z is a rather severely shortened version fairly close to the
*A‘ text of Eyrbyggja saga as represented by the three seventeenth-cen-
tury paper manuscripts AM 448 4to (Aa), AM 442 4to (Ak), AM 126
fol. (Aj) and their descendants (see the stemma on p. 179). The *A1 text
of the saga is also known as the ‘Vatnshyma version’, because it was
contained in the mediaeval saga manuscript Vatnshyma, which at one
time belonged to Peder Resen and later to the University Library of
Copenhagen, where it perished in the Copenhagen fire of 1728. The
Vatnshyma version is the basis of all earlier editions of the saga.
Some of the omissions in Z are surprising and presumably accidental
or mechanical and caused by carelessness and disinclination to copy
difficult passages, especially stanzas, rather than deliberate reducing.
More than half the saga’s stanzas are omitted in Z: 5, 7, 8, 9, 12, 13, 14,
15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 24, 28, 29, 30, 31, 33.5-8, 34, 35, 36. Most of the
other omissions are plain haplographies, including a skip from skilim to
skulum (!) IF IV 121.29-30, which renders the text particularly mean-
ingless. The following is a list of cases where Z lacks more than five
continuous words that are present in all or some of the other *A texts.
The missing text is quoted from the IF edition (which is based on Aa,
but emended from various sources).
20 Syslumannaæfir III, p. 527, IV, p. 864.
21 Manntal 1703, op. cit., p. 46.