Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.2003, Side 288
274
Ian McDougall
Written upside-down at the top of lv is a marginal entry in a seven-
teenth-century hånd. This scribble was, in faet, written right side up
when this part of the leaf formed the inner top-fold of the back cover of
AM 142 4to,10 and reads: “Narfi Jonsson j og Gudda Porbiarnardottir”.
It is safe to assume that Narfi and Gudda (a hypocoristic form of some
such name as Gubbjorg, Gubfinna, Gublaug, Gubny, Gu5rf5ur, or
Gubrun) are meant to be regarded as a couple. This is confirmed by a
Latin verse in the same hånd entered to the right of the names:
Que mihi libertas | illa patema vale J
Sic mihi servitium video dom<inamque paratam).
This reordered version of lines from one of the Elegies of Tibullus* 11
(“Farewell, whatever former ancestral freedom I have had. So I see that
slavery and a mistress await me”) is not an especially nice tag to write
beside the name of one’s present or future wife, but it would appear that
Narfi was trying to be funny. Written above these names (when the leaf
was folded inside the cover of AM 142 4to, but upside-down inside the
ornate initial P at lvb,2-3 when the leaf is folded out as it is today) are
two more lines of names which are now illegible. One can perhaps
make out the patronym “Jonsson”, but this is no more than a guess.
There are further scribbles in the lower margin of lv (also written up-
side-down, and therefore added after the leaf was used for binding).
These appear to be no more than pen-tests of single letters. A different
seventeenth-century scribe has signed his name three times in the top
margin of 2ra: “Biame Einarss”, “Biame Einarsson Eg in hende”,
“Biame Einarsson E [?]” (entered right side up when this margin
formed the top-fold inside the front cover and therefore upside-down
now that the leaf has been folded out). More names are scribbled in the
right margin of 2r, this time right side up, where the margin was folded
inside the front cover. Under an illegible scribble to the right of 2rb,6 is
10 Compare all of the inverted scribbles on lv and 2r with the signature “AM. 142, 4'°”,
entered right side up in black ink in the bottom margin of 2r, after the bifolium was re-
moved from AM 142 4to and catalogued separately.
11 Cf. Tibullus, Elegies II. iv, 1-2 (1994, 8): “Sic mihi servitium video dominamque
paratam: iam mihi, libertas illa paterna, vale”. Apart from occasional substitution of
“Hic” for “Sic” (Tibullus, Elegies II, 1994, 277), the lines always circulated in this form.
Narfi may have jumbled the text in quoting it from memory.