Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series A - 01.06.2003, Blaðsíða 103
THE S RECENSION
61*
spelt ja (já), jó, jú, jg appear as (ia), <io), <iu), <io>; gen. ‘fear’ is not
uncommon. They too are occasionally marked by an accent, presum-
ably an /-marker but not always clearly so, e.g. ‘fíar’, ‘fyrirsíon’,
‘hlíoþan’, Tíuga’, ‘míoc’.
(ii) Diphthongs are similarly treated in 169, but ‘sipnd’ is written for
sjaund, e.g. 26vl5, and two instances of <ey> for ei have been noted,
‘eydi’ 28r2, ‘ney’ 71vl2.
10. Medial a is usually shifted before a following u, e.g.
‘undruþust’, ‘vitrosto’, ‘domundom’, ‘manvðvm’, but a few unshifted
exx. occur in 169, e.g. ‘pvndarvm’. Medial <u> is written in e.g.
‘þionusto’, ‘kuNusto’. In final syllables <i> is regular except in dat. sg.
f. ‘henne’. <u> and <o> both appear in final syllables but with varying
frequency. In NRA 57 they are pretty well equal in number, in NRA 69
and 80 the ratio of <o> to <u) is about 2 : 3, and in 169 <o) figures still
less often, in a ratio to <u> of about 4 : 9. There is an observable ten-
dency to write <u> after n and g, while there is some preference for <o>
after tall stave letters, <1>, <f> and <þ>.
IV. Orthography. Consonants.
1. Temðar’ is written for lembðar/lembdar in 169, 60vl2; cf. Tam-
bv<r>þ’ 64v6.
2. On use of <c> see 7 below.
3. For conventional ð, medial and final, round <d>, <ð> and <þ> are
all freely used, the last especially but by no means universally in asso-
ciation with an abbreviation mark. In the NRA group <ð> is much less
frequent than in 169, about 10% of the total instances compared to
over 40% in the Jónsbók text (where, admittedly, <ð> is sometimes
written where <d> would be expected; it is not infrequent after n). Both
groups show more or less equal numbers of round <d> and <þ> in-
stances. Single <d> or <ð> can stand for dd, e.g. ‘eydr’ NRA 80 (b) vl7,
‘qvadr’ 169, 31r6, ‘eyðr’ 169, 40vl2; and dd is simplified in the com-
pound ‘gialldaga’, ‘gialldogvm’ in 169, 33r9-10, 12. d is lost in the
cluster Idl, e.g. in ‘margfalliga’ NRA 80 (b) r3. In 169 ð is omitted in
‘varveita’ 51vll, ‘varveíta’ 53r5; similarly in ‘ravénndi’ in NRA 69
r32. Final <t> and <d>/<ð> occur in supine forms, and back spellings
like ‘kostnat’, ‘bunat’, ‘hvndrat’ are common. After k the spirant may
appear as <t>, e.g. ‘sekþ’ but also ‘sectir’, ‘omerktum’, ‘þorskr ... flaktr’.