Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series A - 01.06.2003, Blaðsíða 97
THE S RECENSION
59*
start with a capital, and the scribe often writes prep. á and í as ‘.a.’,
‘.i.’; in 169 the former also serves for the third pers. sg. of eiga. The
scribe was evidently a practised but not a careful copyist.
The NRA fragments and AM 169 4to are treated together in the fol-
lowing summary description of the scribe’s orthography.
III. Orthography. Vowels and sonants.
1. (i) <a> is used for short and long a; long a is occasionally marked,
chiefly in monosyllables, e.g. ‘áttbogi’, ‘hár’, ‘nám’, ‘látto’, ‘á’, ‘má’,
‘mál’; if ‘áptr’ (the accent appears over the <p» and ‘crápti’ have parti-
cular significance, it escapes me. vá is spelt <ua>, <va> or <vá>, e.g. ‘huar’,
‘sua’, ‘vattar’, ‘vánar’, ‘várs’, ‘vá’, except in nom. ‘von’, ‘vón’ (cf. dat. pl.
‘vanom’) and ‘voro’, abbreviated ‘v°’ but also written out ‘voro’.
(ii) 169 shows similar forms but the scribe seems in two minds about
q. Dat. pl. of á. “ewe”, appears as ‘0m’ and ‘æm’ (the latter under the
influence of nom. ærl); dat. sg. with suffixed article of á, “river”, as
‘0NÍ’, ‘aÍNÍ’.
2. (i) <e> is normal for e short and long. <é> is sometimes written for
e, e.g. ‘bétr’, ‘béztr’, ‘i avstr vég’, ‘vél’ (adv.), presumably to indicate
some kind of emphasis,34 and forms of fé are commonly written with
<é>. First pers. pron. pl. is written out ‘vær’. There is no sign of any
diphthongal development in long e.
(ii) In 169 the scribe writes ‘þrevétt’ but both ‘tve-’ and ‘tvæ-’ in
‘tvevett’, ‘tvævetr’. <æ> for short e is unusual; a solitary ‘kvgda’ has
been noted.
3. (i) <i> is not regularly marked. The word líf, however, seems to be
written with <í> more often than not.
(ii) 169 has a few instances of <e> for i: third sg. pres. subj. of vilja
is ‘veli’ 50r6; ‘sett’ = sitt 66rl4; ‘setia’ = sitia 28vl4. On the other
hand, the spelling Tedingdar kol’ occurs at 34v7-8. <y> for i is found
in ‘scypti’ 66r4. On <i>/<y> forms see 6 below.
4. (i) Long o is occasionally marked, e.g. ‘fóstrs’, ‘þótt’, ‘sló’, ‘hóf’,
‘þróadiz’, ‘móti’, ‘dóms’, ‘bócmali’, ‘órlausn’, ‘ór’.
34 In NRA 57 r20 the scribe makes good an omission by inserting ‘sigia’ = segja above
the line. This East Norse form is unparalleled in the codex and presumably an aberra-
tion.