Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana. Supplementum - 01.06.2013, Side 473

Abstract
The present work comprises a codicological, palaeo-
graphic, orthographic, and morphological analysis of the
two scribal hands in the Icelandic Kings’ saga manuscript
Morkinskinna (GKS 1009 fol, abbr. MskMS). Both ex-
ternal variation between the two scribes and internal vari-
ation within each hand are analysed. The two hands are
compared on a number of levels, with primary focus on
what the different types of variation can contribute to gen-
eral considerations of scribal identifkation, criteria for dat-
ing, and the inter-relation of scribal norm, exemplar, and
copy. There is also an investigation into whether textually-
based variation can cast light on textual layering in Mork-
inskinna.
The study is based on an electronically tagged text
(XML) with four levels of realisation and linguistic
metadata: lemmatisation and morphosyntactic mark-up
for each of the ca. 100,000 tokens.
Ch. 1 explains the aim and structure of the study. There
is also an introductory description of the manuscript and
an outline of textual and codicological features with an ex-
planation of terminology and notation.
Ch. 2 presents a discussion of some of the general theo-
retical and methodological issues involved in the study of
scribal norm, usage, variation, and influence from the ex-
emplar. There is also a presentation of a number of earlier
investigations of medieval Icelandic manuscripts, and of
the application in the present study of computer data pro-
cessing.
Ch. 3 provides a codicological and palaeographic analysis
of all graph-classes for both scribes, presented in the con-
text of the development of Icelandic script.
Ch. 4 is the orthographic investigation, the main part of
which is a study of the phoneme-grapheme relationships
as witnessed in the writing of the two scribes. In section
4.3 the empirical data is studied from a grapho-phonemic
perspective. This descriptive presentation is followed by
a phono-graphemic analysis in section 4.4 in which the
phonemes of a hypothetical reference system are system-
atically viewed from a historical perspective.
Ch. 5 contains the morphological investigation and a
presentation of the spellings of the most frequent lemmata.
In ch. 6 there is a discussion of the results of the vari-
ous analyses. There is a detailed presentation of external
and internal variation with discussion of the causes of the
latter. Finally there is some explication of issues related to
scribal identification and dating, and a more secure basis
than hitherto is provided for the dating of MskMS.
In ch. 7 the following results, among others, are
presented: 1) External variation is clearly manifested on
the macro-palaeographic, micro-palaeographic, and ortho-
graphic levels, as well as in word-formation, whereas mor-
phological differences between the scribes are less appre-
ciable. 2) Internal variation is found on the same levels.
3) Hand B shows greater internal variation with respect
to micro-palaeography and phono-graphemics, whereas A
demonstrates the greater variation when it comes to word-
formation, and, to some extent, in macro-palaeography
and morphology. 4) Variation in MskMS points to the
fact that it is advisable to incorporate orthographic cri-
teria alongside micro- and macro-palaeography when es-
tablishing scribal identity. 5) Variation in MskMS con-
firms the view that a margin of uncertainty of at least
+25 years must be reckoned with when dating mss. on the
basis of external criteria. 6) The investigation does not al-
ter the traditional dating of MskMS to ca. 1275, but the
many younger features ofhand B point more to 1275—1300
than to 1250—1275. Various observations could suggest that
the exemplar was not older than from the mid-century.
7) There appears to be influence from the exemplar on
all the levels investigated, yet the scribes to a large extent
seem to have stuck to their own individual norms in terms
of palaeography, orthography, and word-formation, while
this is less the case with regard to morphology. Influence
from the exemplar is most noticeable at the start of both
A and B. 8) Analysis of internal variation has not provided
any clarification as to the possible existence of various text-
ual layers in the compilation.
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