Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series A - 01.06.2003, Page 267
THE H RECENSION
225*
In order to come closer to the exemplar followed in H1 and H2 it is ne-
cessary in the following sections to consider in some detail, and re-
grettably with occasional repetition, the scribal and orthographic
habits of Þorleifur Jónsson and sr. Jón Pálsson.4
IV. H1 and H2: Script.
In H' Þorleifur Jónsson writes a swift cursive, often with unexpected
divisions between parts of words; he has no kind of hyphen mark. His
abbreviations are conventional and except in common small words are
sparingly used. He writes longhand <a) and an anglo-saxon <p)
throughout, <6) for ss, tall <f>, usually linked at the top to a following
consonant, and a round <s> initially before vowels and finally. A tailed
<z)-form occurs (after d and n). Names are usually but not invariably
begun with a capital; capitals elsewhere are introduced with some ar-
bitrariness and not always found at the start of a sentence. Chapter ini-
tials are larger, normally in a two-line indent. A typical feature is a
nasal stroke which is used both as a general abbreviating mark and
very commonly over <m) and <n) (these are then correspondingly doub-
led in the transcript printed here). Punctuation consists of a short
slightly oblique stroke reaching just below the line, sometimes fol-
lowed by a point.
In H2 Jón Pálsson writes his slightly childish-looking bookhand. He
often introduces a dot to embellish the roundels of capital letters. Ca-
pitals are used at sentence start and freely elsewhere. Latin quotation
and the opening word or words, sometimes the whole first line of
chapters, are usually written large. The end of a sentence is normally
marked by a point, of a clause by a short, oblique comma stroke. He
indicates word division at line-ends by a pair of short vertical strokes
4 In 1996, after I had finished the following description, Haraldur Bernharðsson kind-
ly sent me his master’s dissertation, Málblöndun í sautjándu aldar uppskriftum ís-
lenskra miðaldahandrita (1995), a valuable study since published under the same title
by Málvísindastofnun Háskóla íslands (1999). Harald’s comparison of Þorleifur Jóns-
son’s copy in AM 304 4to with the text he was transcribing, a substantial part of Stock.
perg. fol. nr 8, adds materially to the observations I made (see the scattered references
to Málblöndun in the comment below). His general conclusion confirms that, like the
other seventeenth-century copyists examined by him, Þorleifur was not much affected
by the orthography of his exemplar.