Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series A - 01.06.2003, Side 169

THE L RECENSION
127*
I. Jóns saga Hand A (Hand 2 of the codex): Script
Hand A writes only from 48ra7 to the end of 48rb; 43 and 51 lines re-
spectively.2 The register is uneven. No hyphen is used where words
are broken at line-ends but this absence is common to all the hands of
the codex. A decorated 3-line <M) begins the Prologue; the saga text
begins with an 8-line <Þ) adorned with a substantial foliage motif
which is extended to fill half the bottom margin; ch. 2 begins at
48rb27 with a plain 3-line <S>. The rubrication is not in the hand of the
scribe nor in that of the rubricator of the preceding Guðmundar saga,
but possibly in Hand IV of the codex (cf. fols. 64v-68vb31).
The script is tightly packed, more cursive than bookhand, but with
many hairstrokes and curlicues. A few characteristic palaeographic
features may be noted, with some comment where necessary. Refer-
ences here are to fol. 48r of the codex; in the sections on orthography
they are to chapter and line in the text as printed below.
<a) occurs alongside the more usual two-storey <a>.
<e> most often resembles <o> with a brief projection to the right at
the base. When <e> is final this projection may be continued up to the
top of the letter to make it a roundel with a vertical or slightly oblique
bar, drawn straight or with a shallow curve, inside it. Intemally the
type is rare (once at a line division, ‘se/tið’, 48rbl9-20; twice in ‘sem’,
48rb33, 44), but it is usual initially in ‘er’, conj. and verb, and occurs
once in ‘er’ at the end of a line, 48rb5. This <e>-type seems first no-
ticed in writings from the Oslo chancery in the early fourteenth centu-
ry (Seip, Palæografi, 117).3 It is freely employed in AM 114 a 4to
(1315-40) and AM Dipl. Norv. LII, 6 (1340), reproduced in Pal. Atlas,
N.S., nrs 12 and 50, but in the 1337 Oslo document reproduced in
Seip, Sprákhistorie, 236, its use is largely confined to the ends of
2 In his paper “En kort betraktelse över skrivarvanor och grupper av handskrifter”,
Olusculum primulum ... til Ólafur Halldórsson (2000), 25-33, Karl G. Johansson
reckons that he also wrote 48val-2 but the letter forms here are those of Hand B, and
the major similarity with Hand A is the appearance of the unbarred (2)-sign for the ok
nota. This is unusual in Hand B but not unknown, see e.g. 50val, 53rb32. Jón Helga-
son, CCIMÆ XIX, 8, limits Hand A’s contribution to 48r.
3 Karl G. Johansson, loc. cit., detects it in a number of other words on fol. 48r of
Stock. 5 but in fact these appear to have the scribe’s usual <e) as described above.