Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.2007, Page 183

7-1 Jon Eggertsson group
153
recto of the first leaf in the gathering. It cannot therefore have been
on the last leaf of the instalment, but most probably on the first, for
Hadorph would hardly have noted the date of arrival in the middle
of a bundle. The transcript must therefore have been sent to Sweden
in at least three stages: one instalment is dated by Jon himself, one
by Hadorph, and at least one must have contained the text preceding
Hadorph’s annotation on fol. 6(}r.
It is possible that the transcript was divided up because Jon was paid
by the page and needed money badly, but it may also suggest that the
Swedes were in a hurry to acquire the text. Jon himself, at any rate, at-
tempted to give the impression that he was working fast and efficiently.
In the poem he wrote at the end of the transcript, he blames the haste
with which he worked for the faet that it was not made as carefully as
he could have wished (cf. p. 13 above). One might take this to mean that
he was under some time pressure. In reality, the dates given within the
transcript itself do not confirm that he worked at break-neck speed, but
he almost certainly had other tasks to attend to at the same time. From
fol. 69, which came into Hadorph’s hånds in Sweden on 8.10.1681, up
to the last leaf, written on 28.1.1682, there are 321 leaves. On average,
therefore, he wrote a maximum of two or three leaves per day, and the
writing on these leaves is far from closely spaced.
7.1.1.2 Brief description of 18
The manuscript is in a solid binding of more recent date. Except for
the faet that the first pages of the text are missing and supplied in a
different hånd, it is complete and in good condition. It consists of three
main parts: the first part is in quarto (c. 16.5 X 21 cm) and consists of
two gatherings where the prologue and the beginning of the saga text
there can hardly be any doubt that it should be read as 1, which is also how Jonna
Louis-Jensen reads it (Louis-Jensen 1977: 16—17, note 7).