Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series A - 01.06.2003, Síða 93
THE S RECENSION
55*
local men who made this practical use of manuscript books rather than
the secretaries in the castles to whom the returns were made.25 In some
cases this seems so but it can hardly have been the story of every frag-
ment. But if Nordfjord was the district where the volume of vemacu-
lar saints’ lives to which these fragments belonged was dismembered,
it would be tempting to associate it with the Benedictine abbey at Sel-
ja. It might even be worth recalling that Jón Eindriðason was abbot of
Selja when he was elected bishop of Skálholt in 1339; he was in Ice-
land from 23 August 1339 till his death on 16 March 1341 (DN XVII
B: 1,265).
Apart from the damage caused by shearing, the fragments are in
good condition, the script bold and clear with a characteristic ductus.
The same hand is found in AM 169 4to, Jónsbók, a codex whose
provenance was not recorded for us by Arni Magnússon. It is marked
b in Ólafur Halldórsson’s edition (1904), xli, and used sporadically by
him in his variant apparatus. The text and its ordering are reckoned to
be close to that of AM 134 4to (/' in Jb.), dated to the 1280s or '90s.
Neither of these includes Farmannalög, though since they end defec-
tive it is possible that they once did. They do have a form of ch. 28 of
Farmannalög inserted after ch. 16 in Þjófabálkr. In this they resemble
the Jónsbók text in AM 154 4to, fols. 2v-69v, dated to the first half of
the fourteenth century.26 Fols. 76v-78v in 169 contain King Hákon’s
réttarbót of June 1314, Jb., 293-299, ending defective with art. 23, Jb.
299/2.
Five hands are represented in AM 169 4to, which was obviously a
scriptorium product: I lv-9r; II 9vl-7, 9vl4-15vl3, 15vl5-25rl7,
76v-78v; III 9v7-14; IV 15vl4-15; V 26r-76r. Hand V is that of the
scribe of NRA 57, 69 and 80. Rubrics on fols. 1-25 in 169 appear to be
in Hands I and III; on fols. 26r-47v they are first in Hand V, occasion-
ally in Hand I; on fols. 47r-75v they are all in Hand I; the rubric at the
start of the réttarbót on fol. 76v appears to be in Hand III.
On fol. lr, originally left blank, a fourteenth-century hand recorded
a partially legible list of debts:
25 Anne Holtsmark, Studier i norr0n diktning (1956), 9, with reference to O. A. John-
sen, in Sproglige og historiske Afhandlinger viede Sophus Bugges Minde (1908), 96,
n. 1. Storm, loc. cit., had thought differently.
26 See especially Ole Widding, Scripta Islandica 18 (1967), 3-20.