Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series A - 01.06.2003, Síða 148
106*
INTRODUCTION
This is close to S 4/6-8, but ‘doctrinæ lucrandæ gratia’ answers to H
11/6-7 ‘til frædi nams’ and the reference to Rome to H 11/11, ‘fra
Romj’. Both these phrases appear as marginal additions in this passage
in 391, entered by Arni Magnússon in the form they have in 392 (cf. p.
104* above). (Árni Magnússon uses the plural ‘Romá habent qvædam
... exemplaria’, but whether that is a lapse or justified by his thinking
of both 392 and the revised 391 is hard to say.) On Árni Magnússon’s
acquaintance with the Sæmundar þáttr in L, also evidenced in his Vita
Sæmundi, see p. 187*.
BL Add. 4867 (B').
More extensive descriptions of this folio volume are in Njála II, 760-
64 (by Eiríkr Magnússon) and The British Library, Catalogue of Addi-
tions ... 1756-1782, 250-53 (the foliation in both these accounts ig-
nores blank leaves, seven after fol. 225, one after fol. 226, two after
fol. 255). ‘Saga Iöns Hoola Biskups’ is on fols. 207r-225v, the last of
the eight texts contributed by Jón Þórðarson. He signs his name in
Greek characters at the end of item 1 and as a monogram of ‘JÞS’ at
the end of Jóns saga, item 8. The other three texts are each in a differ-
ent hand. Items 9-11 are not dated in the manuscript; according to Jón
Helgason’s catalogue of the British Library’s Icelandic manuscripts
(scheduled for completion and publication by Jonna Louis-Jensen),
item 9, Laurentius saga, is in a hand contemporary with Jón Þórðar-
son’s (cf. Laurentius saga, lvi-lvii), items 10 and 11 in an eighteenth-
century hand. Jón Þórðarson gives the following dates: fol. 54r
‘1690’; fol. 99v ‘Anno Domini 1690 D(ie) 18 Decembris’; fols. 103r,
lllr, 144v, 155r ‘Anno 1691’; fol. 206v ‘Anno 1692 D(ie) 6 Januarij’;
fol. 225v ‘Anno 1692’. The only item not dated by him is nr 6,
Ljósvetninga saga, though it can be confidently assigned to 1691.
Jón Þórðarson undoubtedly wrote his eight copies for Magnús Jóns-
son í Vigur (Njála II, 761; Jón Þorkelsson, Arkiv VIII, 201-02), what-
ever the provenance of the three other texts in the volume. (On Magnús,
1637-1702, see e.g. ÍÆ III, 433-34; Jóhann Gunnar Ólafsson, Skírnir
130, 107-26; and, on the manuscript copies he commissioned, Kvæða-
bók úr Vigur, B, 7-14.) Jón Þórðarson died as bóndi of Kálfavík in
Ögursveit some time between late 1700 and early 1703, see KBKat.
119, on NKS 1141 fol.; AMKat. I, 580, on AM 345 4to; Manntal 1703,