Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series A - 01.06.2003, Blaðsíða 231
THE L RECENSION
189*
he cites for (1) is ‘Fragmentum qvoddam Manuscriptum’, for (2)
‘Fragmentum qvoddam membraneum’, for (3) and (4) ‘Fragmentum
membraneum’. The problem is to decide whetherAmi is referring to a
fragment of a Jóns saga or of some other text.
(1) goes back to íslendingabók, cf. fslb., 9/17-18, but is also in
Kristni saga, cf. Hb., 145/7-9 (with correct ‘nonus’ for ‘septimus’ in
the preserved íslendingabób, cf. Levned II, 75); L1, cf. 1/16-19, lacked
the reference to ísleif’s age and the name and number of Pope Leo. (2)
similarly goes back to íslb., 10/45-46; it is also in Hungrvaka, Bysk.s.,
89/9-10 (cf. 85/4), in Kristni saga, Hb., 146/24-25, and in Jóns saga
itself, L1 19/8. (3) appears to be known only in Kristni saga, Hb.,
147/13-15. (4) again goes back to íslb., 10/47-50, but is also in Krist-
ni saga, Hb., 146/25-28. If the source referred to by Árni was a frag-
ment of a single text, which appears probable, it looks as though this
can only have been a text of Kristni saga, the one work known to con-
tain all four of these points.
The only vellum fragment of Kristni saga now preserved is the last
four of the 18 folios which make up AM 371 4to, Hauksbók. Ámi
Magnússon got 14 of these 18 leaves in Copenhagen after 1694 and
before 1702, the other four (it is not known which they were) in Ice-
land in 1702 (Jón Helgason, MI V, xxviii). (1) is the only passage now
extant on these leaves, on fol. 18; the rest would have been on the next
folio, now lost, into which the end of Kristni saga would have neatly
fitted; cf. Ólafur Halldórsson, Jóansbolli, 42. This lost folio was ex-
cerpted by Björn Jónsson á Skarðsá, not before c. 1635, and was obvi-
ously still in existence when Jón Erlendsson, c. 1660, made his tran-
script of Kristni saga in AM 105 fol.; see Jón Helgason, Opuscula I, 7,
9-10 (nrs 18-19, 37, 40); MI V, xxxii-xxxiii. Ólafur Halldórsson,
Jóansbolli, 46-47, demonstrated that Árni must in fact have derived
another variant from the lost fol. *19 of AM 371 4to, when on p. 131
of the same vol. XII of the Bartholin excerpts he adds an alternative
number (= Hb., 148/17) on the authority of a source he summarily
notes as ‘Fragmentum’. Yet another piece of evidence is to be found in
a marginal note on pp. 135-36 of the Bartholin volume, referring to
‘Fragmentum qvoddam in membrana manuscriptum’:
Gissurus Episcopus anteqvam qvadrantem Islandiæ Episcopo
Holensi concederet incolas Islandiæ numeravit qvi judices ad fo-