Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series A - 01.06.2003, Blaðsíða 268
226*
INTRODUCTION
on the line. His abbreviations are conventional, more freely used than
by Þorleifur Jónsson: <!> for ur (both on the line and as a superior fi-
gure), the ar sign, and a superscript horizontal loop, open at the bot-
tom, for ‘ck’ in e.g. ‘ecki’ and for vowel + ‘k’/‘ck’ in e.g. ‘nockud’,
‘þacker’, ‘taka’, ‘mikill’; ok is abbreviated as ‘o’ with the same sign
but when written out is ‘og’. At the end of words -is is sometimes writ-
ten as a dotted stroke trailing in a slight curve below the line to the
right. He writes <a> as a two-storey letter with a closed top and uses
anglo-saxon <f> almost invariably, though always roman in the <ff>
spelling he sometimes affects for -/-, see VI 4 below. Tall <f> is seldom
used except in ‘fs’ (the two are not ligatured). Tailed <z> occurs in
word-final position. <æ> is sometimes made <^e>.
V. H1 and H2: Orthography. Vowels and sonants.
1. For a Þorleifur Jónsson uses his longhand <a>; for á either the same
unmarked <a> or often the cursive development of <aa> (usually with a
pair of superior dots, <áá», rarely <a> and <aa>. Only <a> is written be-
fore ng. An isolated lengthening is suggested by ‘aara-’ (for Ara-, 96/3);
it is conceivably a relic, though not supported by H2, ‘Ara-’. There is a
solitary instance, ‘Aarasun’, in Flat. II, 609/12 (refers to a Norwegian),
and á in the name can be paralleled sporadically in Icelandic docu-
ments of the fifteenth and early sixteenth century (Lind, Dopnamn, 31,
Suppl., 23); it of course occurs rather earlier in Norwegian sources
(Lind, Dopnamn, 31-32). Elsewhere in H1 it is written with <a>.
Jón Pálsson writes his two-storey <a> for a. Long a is most often <á>
(occasionally <a> or <á»; ligatured <aa> or <æ> occurs, but rarely. <á> in
‘Márkvz’ 12/72 and <aa> in ‘fþraadum’ 78/52 (‘foradinu’ in H') are
presumably errors.
In both H1 and H2 older vá appears as <uo>/<vo>, with <o> unmarked
in H1 except in ‘vó’ 12/8, but in H2 sometimes marked as <ö> (in open
monosyllables, ‘vö’ 12/8, ‘þuö’ 57/3, 62/7, 77/8, not in other contexts,
‘voda’, ‘huolf’, ‘von’, ‘vorid’); svá is written ‘so’ everywhere except
once ‘sö’ (16/8) in H1 and ‘suo’ (78/2) in H2. The solitary ‘huall’ in Sþ
is in both texts, cf. L 16/17 t.n.
Immediately before a and u in endings old vowel assimilation re-
mains, e.g. nom. pl. f. ‘fáár’ 53/2, and dat. pl. ‘fáám’ 36/4, ‘faam’
44/22, 46/15.