Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.2007, Page 234

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RjELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE TRANSCRIPTS
usson has furthermore corrected Åsgeir Jonsson’s transcript of
Ynglinga saga (up to the first lacuna) from the original.)
(Louis-Jensen 1977: 17)
It is not quite correct to say that Årni Magnusson’s visit to Torfæus in
1689 was his only one. He also visited him on his way from Iceland
in 1712.137 This, however, was long afiter Åsgeir Jonsson’s time and
therefore has no effect on Louis-Jensen’s argument. The issue, then,
is whether we can accept her tacit assumption that Årni wrote these
pages while Åsgeir was working on the transcript.
That Louis-Jensen connects the dating with Årni’s transcript of the
OH text in 36, not with his corrections in 35, is probably well advised.
It is not necessary for the two interventions to have taken place at the
same time, and it is in the first instance easier to imagine that the cor-
rections were added afterwards than that the transcript, which is part
of the continuous text, was written in later: the text in Årni’s hånd filis
exactly two leaves (fol. 376-377), begins in the middle of a sentence
started by Åsgeir, and ends in the middle of a sentence completed by
him.
Even if Finnur Jonsson did not use the information about Årni
Magnusson’s visit to Stangeland in 1689 to date the transcript, it is im-
plicit that he believed Åsgeir Jonsson was working on it during Årni’s
visit: he imagined that Årni wrote the two leaves in order to help Åsgeir
with a section where Kringla was difficult to read (HkrFJ I: iii). But
this explanation does not seem particularly convincing. Jon Eggerts-
son seems not to have had much of a problem reading the same text.
Nor is there anything to suggest that Åsgeir had any particular diffi-
culty reading this section in 70, which also contains OH from Kringla.
137 This can be documented, for example, in AM 435 b 4W, which is Årni’s own cata-
logue of Torfæus’s library, dated Stangeland, October 1712 (cf. KålKatAM I: 635,
also in Kålund 1916: no. 153).