Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series A - 01.06.2003, Qupperneq 110
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INTRODU CTION
a triangular attachment below the line, the down stroke beginning in the
middle of the (o) rather than at its right-hand side; no diacritic mark is
used over <i); his <í) sometimes has a slight tail below the line; his <y)
is made as <v> with an appended tail curling to the right «y5».
(ii) Long a is rarely marked. vá is always represented by <ua> «uá»
except in the pl. ‘uopn(in)’ (cf. ‘vapnatak’ elsewhere) and doubtless in
the third person pl. of vera, abbreviated ‘v°’. Forms of mikill are
‘mikill’, ‘mikit’, ‘myklo’. <u> is the predominant form for vowel and
sonant; ‘vorðinn’ and ‘uurðu’ (beside ‘urðu’) occur. y is unrounded in
‘þickia’, ‘firir’, ‘ifir’. æ (not distinguished from œ) is written <§> and
<e). There are a good many exx. of unshifted a: ‘allum’, ‘skilrikastu’,
‘tillagu’, ‘sakaðum’, ‘skipaðu’; the Althing is ‘exarar þing’; third pres.
sg. of höggva is ‘heggr’. Diphthongs are all conventionally expressed.
Vowels in end syllables are normally <i> and <u>, but <e> and <o> are
occasionally written and the latter is regular in ‘ero’ and common in
‘skulo’ (most often abbreviated ‘fto’, sometimes ‘Ru’). Suffixes are
with <e>: -leg-, -end-.
(iii) <c> is used only in <ck> for long k. <d> is comparatively fre-
quent for ð; <t> for ð in endings is common: ‘þer hafit’, ‘kostnat’, ‘hundr-
at’, and there is some irregular tendency to observe the t-ð and ð-t rule,
e.g. ‘d^mðut’, ‘latið’, ‘getið’. <ð> is regular after m: ‘siðsemðar’, ‘skemð-
ar’, ‘d?mðr’; as is unvoicing after k: ‘sekt’, ‘spektina’, ‘fatgktar’. <þ> is
sparingly written for ð, not invariably in association with an abbrevia-
tion: ‘udaþa menn’, ‘niþings’, ‘hofþingia’ as well as ‘skemþar’,
‘manaþar’, ‘meþr//?’. <í> is written in ‘iafnan’, omitted in ‘þamaz’.
Palatal g is indicated in ‘giorr’, comp. adv., but not elsewhere. Long g is
written <g> in ‘bygðir’, ‘trygðir’, ‘trygrofi’. Initial hl-, hr- are generally
written <1> and <r>: ‘lut’, ‘laupa’, ‘leypr’, ‘riðir’, ‘ringia’, ‘reinsanar’.
Palatal k is once indicated in ‘þeir ki^ra’; cf. third sg. ‘k^rir’. Long k is
written <k> in ‘stoks’. The scribe writes <11> before t and often before d
but is wayward in this latter case: the verbs halda and gjalda are written
now with <ld>, now with <lld); cf. ‘þegngildi’ and ‘þegngilldis’. Third
pres. sg. of skilja is both ‘skil’ and ‘skill’; <11> in ‘karll’ presumably in-
dicates rl assimilation. The scribe distinguishes accurately between n
and nn except once in ‘sanenda’, where he probably forgot the macron.
Only <pt> is found in ‘aptr’, ‘eptir’ and so on. Distinction between short
and long r is as accurate as between short and long n. </> is used after
<d>/<ð>, <o> and irregularly after <g). <r> is used only to represent long