Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series A - 01.06.2003, Blaðsíða 258
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INTRODUCTION
We do not know Halldór’s source, and we cannot assume his text
represents the beginning of an H text. On the contrary, his first words
suggest rather that it was derived from S2, AM 234 fol. The saga there
begins ‘Þar hefjum ver savgv eða fra savgnn’; in S4, AM 235 fol., ‘Þar
hefium uer frasogn’; in L1, Stock. perg. fol. 5, ‘Þar byrium wer
fraspghn’. The natural explanation of the doublet in S2 is that the
scribe wrote ‘savgv’ because that was the word he expected to find;
when he saw it should have been ‘fra savgnn’, as in S4 and L', he made
the common kind of etlaut self-correction by adding it as an altema-
tive. Halldór’s ‘Saugu’ thus appears to offer a distinctive correspon-
dence with S2.
Ámi Magnússon was told by Magnús Markússon (c. 1671-1733; ÍÆ
III, 445-46), whose authority carries some weight, that Halldór “skrif-
adi ... iafnlega rangt” or “allra manna rengst” (Opuscula IV, 105-06).
Even so, it is hard to think he could have reproduced S 1/1-19 so inac-
curately had AM 234 fol. been in front of him. As far as we know,
Halldór worked in the North, and it is probably safest to conclude that
his exemplar was an intermediate and less than careful copy of Jóns
saga in the Skálholt codex. That postulated copy seems to have left no
other trace.
Jón Pálsson must thus have copied the Jóns saga text now in 392 be-
fore c. 1650. We may compare his copies in AM 380 4to (Hungrvaka,
Þorláks saga), 404 4to (Laurentius saga), 446 4to (Eyrbyggja saga)
and 458 4to (Egils saga). These were formerly collected into a single
volume, on the flyleaf of which Bishop Þorlákur Skúlason wrote a note
of ownership and the date 1641 (preserved in 404). Guðbrandur
Vigfússon was confident that 1641 was the date of the copying (Bps. I,
xxvi, xlii). Jón Helgason thought it probable - “biskup hefur merkt sér
hana nýja” (Nordæla, 126; cf. Bysk.s., 29; MI3, x-xi) - and could point
to a parallel in AM 379 4to, where Bishop Þorlákur wrote a note of
ownership with the date 1654 in what was certainly a new-made book
(cf. AMKat. I, 593-94). On the other hand, Árni Björnsson, Laurentius
saga, xlv, found it “ekki... ólíklegt” that the bishop made and dated his
ownership note as a precaution before lending the book to somebody;
cf. Stefán Karlsson, Stafkrókar, 396. At best this can provide no more
than a pointer to the date of 392, but we can hardly be far adrift if we as-
sign it to the late 1630s or about 1640. The presence of biskupasögur in
380 and 404, both certainly written by Jón Pálsson not later than 1641,