Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series A - 01.06.2003, Page 252
210*
INTRODUCTION
It has been pointed out that the association of these copies from
Vatnsdalur with the work by Þorleifur Jónsson and Jón Pálsson, who
are known to have written for Bishop Þorlákur Skúlason, may be ex-
plained by the fact that in or about 1636 the bishop’s sister, Sesselja,
married Bárður Gíslason (c. 1600-1670) who lived in Vatnsdalur (Stu-
dia Centenalia, 98; cf. Stefán Karlsson, Stafkrókar, 392). On the other
hand, the date of the copying in Vatnsdalur obviously gives no assured
terminus for the copying by Þorleifur and sr. Jón.
The contents of 4 came into the hands of Magnús Jónsson í Vigur
(see p. 106* above). There is some evidence (Studia Centenalia, 99) to
suggest that they were bound (or re-bound?) for him, and he wrote his
name on the paste-down of the back cover. The Jóns saga written by
Þorleifur Jónsson, if we presume it accompanied the other texts by
him (cf. below), was apparently not included, perhaps because it was
evidently defective at the beginning and end. AM 426 fol. is a volume
put together for Magnús Jónsson in 1682, but containing transcripts
made for him over the preceding fifteen years or so. The copy of Fóst-
brœðra saga in it is thought to have had the text of 4 as its exemplar
(Fóstbrœðrasaga, xxvii). The copyist was Magnús Þórólfsson (on
whom see Jónas Kristjánsson, Afmælisrit til Steingríms J. Þorsteins-
sonar, 89-96). Since Magnús died in 1667, the suggestion that texts in
4 came from Hólar to Vigur after the marriage of Ragnheiður, Magnús
Jónsson’s sister, to Bishop Gísli Þorláksson in 1674 (Studia Centena-
lia, 99) will not hold water. (On the copies of Harðar saga in AM 153
fol. and BL Add. 4868, both closely related to the text in 4 but prob-
ably not directly derived from it, see Hast, Bibl. Am. XXIII, 127-32;
4868, dated 1667, was also written by Magnús Þórólfsson for Magnús
í Vigur, not many weeks or months before the copyist’s death.) It was
presumably to Magnús í Vigur that an agent of Jón Eggertsson’s paid
a good price for 4, perhaps with Jóns saga thrown in, in 1682, the year
in which 426 was bound up. Ten years later Magnús í Vigur made
good a lack in his voluminous library by commissioning a copy of
Jóns saga in the S recension (see pp. 106*-07* on BL Add. 4867).
Two items in 4 that lack marginal annotation by Bjöm á Skarðsá are
11, Páls saga, the solitary piece written by sr. Jón Pálsson, and 13,
Víga-Glúms saga, one of the several texts written by Þorleifur Jóns-
son. There seems, in fact, no reason to assume that the items to which
Bjöm Jónsson added notes were known to him in a permanently