Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series A - 01.06.2003, Page 249
3. The H recension of Jóns saga
This version is called C in Bps. but here called H, chiefly because the
two paper manuscripts in which it is preserved, and by inference their
exemplar, are associated with Hólar. In the extant manuscripts the H
recension is followed by a text of Gísls þáttr lllugasonar (Gþ) and a
fragmentary text of Sæmundar þáttr (Sþ) derived from a manuscript of
the L recension; see pp. 182*-84*.
I. Manuscripts and scribes.
The two manuscripts containing H are Stockholm papp. 4:o nr 4 and
AM 392 4to. The copyist of the first was Þorleifur Jónsson í Graf-
arkoti, while the second is attributed to sr. Jón Pálsson (see Jón Helga-
son, Opuscula IV, 5-6; Stefán Karlsson, Opuscula IV, 95, and his Skrif-
arar Þorláks biskups Skúlasonar, Stafkrókar, 383-403; Ólafur
Halldórsson, Grænland, 163-64; P. Springborg, Gardar VIII, 64-65,
and further pp. 216*-17* below). Þorleifur Jónsson does not seem to
have been active as a scribe after the 1630s. AM 304 4to, which can be
plausibly assigned to this decade on other grounds, contains Hákonar
saga Hákonarsonar begun by Þorleifur (fols. 251-97) but then run on
in the same quire and completed by Björn Jónsson á Skarðsá (fols.
298-362). That this sudden change was because Þorleifur died (as sug-
gested by Jón Helgason, Opuscula IV, 6-7), or became incapacitated,
is a reasonable explanation but naturally remains an assumption. It
should be remarked that, as well as annotating Þorleif’s copy of Jóns
saga now in Stock. 4, Bjöm á Skarðsá made evident use of it at the
opening of his Annálar um fiölda og aldur kirkna á Hólum, in auto-
graph in AM 220 8vo, but this brief work, which ends with the new
church of 1627, is unfortunately not closely dated; Björn is not likely
to have written much between the late 1640s and his death in 1655,
when he was in or past his eighty-first year.1
1 He must however have known some version of the tale of Sæmundr fróði’s escape
from his master more extensive than the text preserved in H ch. 11, and different from
the opening of the Sæmundar þáttr (corresponding to L 16/1-25) on the last page of the