Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series A - 01.06.2003, Síða 290
248*
INTRODUCTION
about his mother, Þorgerðr, as a child abroad with her parents. But hav-
ing omitted it, he then failed to insert it.) On the other hand, the matter
lost that corresponded to S 8/157-15/19 (L 28/5-35/6) fills approximat-
ely four columns in S2, seven in L'. So the omission might originally
have been caused by the loss of a single leaf from a manuscript similar
to S2. Or it might not.
2. The date ofthe exemplar. The writers of H1 and H2 use their own
“modern” orthography and forms, and sr. Jón Pálsson, the younger
man, is not surprisingly rather more modem than Þorleifur Jónsson.
Nevertheless, they coincide in a number of unusual spellings and forms,
which in these texts are either unique or rare enough, both here and in
other texts written by these same men, to appear exceptional. They can
be safely regarded as lifted from the exemplar and some of them repre-
sent innovations in the language first attested in the later fourteenth or
in the fifteenth century. They include nom. ‘mann’ 2/2 (cf. p. 158*
above, n. 31 and Bandle, 256); ‘einshuor-’ 25/1 (probably a norwegianism
in origin; cf. Fritzner, s.v.; NgL, V, s.v. ‘einn hverr’; Hægstad, Vest-
norske maalfpre I (1908), 118; it is not recorded in Málið and Bandle);
‘himirijkis’ 98/14 (Láneordene, s.v.; P. Springborg, Equus Troianus, 66-
69); ‘Þad skedi’ 25/1 (Láneordene, s.v.); dual pron. ‘þid’ for pl. 44/7
(Bandle, 347-48; Helgi Guðmundsson, The Pronominal Dual, 20-29);
‘þuerrudu’ 84/18 (cf. ‘þvRv’, S 44/17; Um ísl. orðmyndir, 113; Bandle,
399); ‘soddann’ 96/14 (Láneordene, s.v.).
The significance of ‘eki’ = ekki 39/7 is dubious; it might be from an
abbreviated ‘ek/i’ with a gemination dot forgotten, erased or unnoticed,
but it can be paralleled, cf. Mundt, Hákonar saga, xxii (on Hand A 3 in
Stock. perg. fol. nr 8, c. 1340-70); ÓHJH, 731/26, 732/3, 733/7 (from
AM 75 e 5 fol., fifteenth century); Bandle, 101-02.
In H' the only instance of <ægi) for agi is in ‘wr lægi’ 66/4, and this
spelling, evidenced from c. 1400 onwards (Um ísl. orðmyndir, xviii),
has not been noted elsewhere as Þorleifur Jónsson’s habit. It coincides
with Jón Pálsson’s spelling at the same place, but he writes ‘ægi’ for agi
elsewhere, so its significance is also uncertain. It was probably not a
marked feature of their common exemplar.
The spelling ‘Reit’ for rétt 74/3, 5 must have been in the joint exem-
plar of H' and H2. It might there have depended on a simple misreading
of ‘Rett’ or ‘rett’, but it may also be that the <ei> spelling indicated di-
phthongisation of é. This was of course usually realised by <ie) but <ei)