Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series A - 01.06.2003, Side 131
THE S RECENSION
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VII. Hand B.
A few forms in Hand B’s brief contribution may be noted: ‘iartein’;
nom. sg. m. adj. ‘lifindi’ (cf. IV 11 above); ‘huoá’ = hváir; ‘sua’; ‘þu
uill’; first person pl. pron. ‘wer’; middle voice ending <z> and <zt);
prep. við written out ‘uit’.
VIII. Hand C.
The orthography of this scribe varies so much that a whole survey
would be disproportionate in this context. Some of the variety doubt-
less depends in part on differences in the exemplars from which his
copies of thirteen texts were immediately or ultimately derived, and a
full study would of course require close attention to the distribution of
his vagaries. We can take it, for instance, that ‘nackuat’ forms, subst.
‘muðr’ and a couple of middle voice forms in <s> are relics from earli-
er sources. On the other hand, the issue is complicated by the impres-
sion, which seems unavoidable, that the writer had an individual way-
wardness. As Unger bluntly remarked, “jo længer det lider ud i Bogen,
jo skjpdeslpsere er den skreven” (Hms. I, vii). It is difficult to know
what to make of a scribe who writes ‘hlyttur’ for hlutur and ‘barg-
dagai’ for bardaga. To exemplify his variety it is enough to note that
both short and long a can be represented by <a>, <á>, <ai> and <ái>,
short and long e by <e>, <é>, <y>, <æ> and <æ>, and front mutation of á
by <e>, <é>, <g>, «>, <é>, <æ>, <æ> and (rarely) <ö>. The following notes
are consequently confined to some salient features of his practice, dif-
ferent in some degree from that of Hand A and with possible rele-
vance to an assessment of the date of the codex.
1. (i) Unshifted forms of short a are not common but often occur in
dat. pl. ‘kualum’, 39rbl, 40rbl3, 40vbl2, 42va8, 56va31, 63val8-19,
65va38; dat. sg. ‘kual’ has been noted at 40va29, 40vb34 (cf. ‘kuðl’
57rb23); nom. ‘dúal’ 66rbl7 (cf. ‘dúol’ 45va25).
(ii) Unger remarked on the characteristic spelling ‘siolf-’, common-
ly found beside ‘sialf-’ forms throughout the text (Hms. I, vii). The
spelling ‘sio’, ‘seo’ (often with marked <o» is also found here and
there in forms of the verb sjá, e.g. 22rb28, 22va27, 23vb24, 24rb5,
29va21, 35vall; cf. nom. sg. m. and f. of the demonstrative ‘sio’
22rb22, 40rbl2, inf. ‘skiolfa’ 63va8.