Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.2007, Page 173

6.2 Transcripts of Kringla
143
That is, doubtless, the volume PormoSur later gave to Oddur
SigurSsson.)
(Finnur Jonsson 1930: II, 222)
Jonna Louis-Jensen has suggested that this manuscript may be 521
(1977: 17, note 12). Since 521 consists of several parts, and Arni men-
tions a transcript whose exemplar he identified with Kringla, it seems
possible that the transcript Arni mentions is the same as the Kringla
part in 521, and that the other parts were bound together with it later.
It is, however, most probable that the different parts were kept to-
gether while they were in Iceland, since all the parts are in Asgeir
Jonsson’s hånd. Årni States that the manuscript in question was bound
in Norway. 521 is enclosed in wooden boards with stamped leather Re-
naissance covers. On the parchment there are a couple of faint blind
impressions that may be a date beginning with the digits “17”. This
type of binding belongs stylistically to the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries in Norway, but was considered old-fashioned by the end of
the seventeenth century (see Schjoldager 1927: 81). Even if the tran-
script of Kringla mentioned by Arni is the same as parts of 522, one
cannot exclude the possibility that the binding is Icelandic, since we
know that this type of binding was still in use in Iceland and not un-
common. It is of the same type as the so-called “Skålholt binding” of
which we have many beautiful examples from the years after 1685 and
which is mentioned by, among others, Chr. Westergård-Nielsen in
his introduction to the facsimile of Skdlholtsbokeldri (1971: 27—28). In
the Norwegian National Library there is also another codex contain-
ing texts in Icelandic with the same type of binding, NB Oslo 313 fol.
This manuscript was also in Iceland, where it belonged to the sheriff
(syslumadur) Jon Årnason at Ingjaldsholl (1727-1777). It contains six
different saga texts in three different hånds (Jonas Kristjånsson 1967:
49). The identity of the scribe is not mentioned in Jonas Kristjånsson’s
description but there is no doubt that the first hånd, which transcribed