Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.2005, Blaðsíða 19
Observations on Some Manuscripts of Egils saga
9
reader must ask, however, how this can possibly be true. For example,
Finnur Jonsson mentions some paper copies belonging to the B-redac-
tion. Now in W, which is the main manuscript of the B-redaction, there
are two lacunae, one of them of considerable length (more than 50
pages in EgFJ). But in paper manuscripts assigned by Finnur Jonsson to
the B-class the saga is preserved complete, which must mean one of
two things: either they were copied from the W codex when it was less
defective than it is now, or they descend from related but lost manu-
scripts. Whichever explanation is correct, it seems incredible in both
cases that they should be worthless for purposes of comparison.
The truth is that generalisations about all the paper manuscripts of
Egils saga are absurd. This will emerge more clearly from the study of
some of them presented on the following pages.
§3.
The first two Amamagnæan manuscripts of Egils saga to be considered
here are AM 463 4to and AM 560 d 4to. The former, completed on 19
March 1664, is in the hånd of Brynjolfur Jonsson å Efstalandi (Oxna-
dalur).4 The latter is part of a larger collection of sagas, AM 560 a-d 4to,
and at the end of one text it is mentioned that it was written in 1707 at
GeirroSareyri. At this time GeirroSareyri (otherwise known as Narfeyri
[Snæfellsnes]) was the home of GuSmundur riki Porleifsson; the book
was in other words written in the very year that the great smallpox epi-
demic swept through GuSmundur’s home and claimed the lives of all
his children, including the fiancée of Oddur logmadur SigurSsson.5
Whereas the text of the saga in 463 is complete, there are lacunae in 560
where leaves have been lost. The extant text begins there with the
words Haf de sigur (cf. EgEA I, ch. 9,14 and appendix IV, p. 207). Other
missing passages are ch. 22,45-25,13, 35,32-48,19, and 85,36 to the
end.
4 [It appears from his unpublished material at the Amamagnæan Institute in Copenhagen
that Jon Helgason, only shortly after completing the present article, discovered a copy of
Egils saga closely related to 463 in Uppsala, University Library R: 698, which was writ-
ten by the same scribe in 1661. It has not yet been investigated whether 463 is collateral
with or copied from 698, but the assessment of the one can be expected to apply mutatis
mutandis to the other.]