Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.2007, Page 165

6.1 Reproduction of texts in the past and present
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such alteration is highly variable, and in some scribes who concentrate
on orthographic accuracy it can be reduced to a bare minimum. Some
scribes also insisted upon copying details which were relatively in-
significant, but from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries I know
of only one copyist who methodically practised what we might call
diplomatic accuracy, and that is Arni Magnusson himself. It is also re-
latively certain that Arni Magnusson’s scientific methods laid the basis
for the critical approach evidenced by Jon Olafsson in his memorising
of Heidarviga saga. Arni Magnusson doubtless influenced others too,
including Asgeir Jonsson.
The difference between the old tradition of transcription and the
new has its origins in the scribes’ different attitudes towards their task.
The new attitude goes together with the academic use of the material.
Deliberate changes and rewriting were normal in the reproduction of
saga texts in the Middle Ages. If the scribe thought he could improve
on something, he saw no reason to abstain. A medieval scribe could
develop the text, while the task of the seventeenth-century academic
scribe was to conserve it, i. e. reproduce it as it was. In the academic in-
stitutions a modern attitude was adopted towards medieval texts. They
were seen as fiinite, as “antiquities”, as remains from times past, and
as historical sources. Despite this “antiquarian view” a seventeenth-
century scribe could also make deliberate changes, but he would hardly
undertake a whole new construction. He could, however, undertake
reconstruction (emendation), and if the exemplar was damaged or dif-
ficult to read he could insert conjectural readings. He could also replace
words which he believed to be meaningless or corrupted with other
supposedly meaningful ones, without necessarily bringing the text any
doser to the original.
If the exemplar had lacunae, a seventeenth-century scribe could sup-
plement these with text from other manuscripts. Commentary and ex-
planatory interpolations also occur in seventeenth-century transcripts,
but mostly as visible additions, for example as marginal annotations.