Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series A - 01.06.2003, Page 312
270*
INTRODU CTION
on the strength of this we may presume that Jón læröi had read and
probably excerpted a manuscript of the L recension, but we cannot tell
where, or when before 1641, he did so. It was not however L1 or a de-
rivative from it, for this reads ‘eigna daga vitrum monnum heiðnum.
sua sem at kalla Thyrs dag. Oðins dag. eðr Þors dag.’ Cf. S 8/85-86
‘eigna daga heiðnvm monnvm eða gvðvm. sem er at kalla Oðins dag.
eða Þors’; H 21/21-22 ‘eigna heidnumm gðdumm edur vondumm
vættumm dægur eda daga. so sem var ad kalla Þors dag. edur Odinns
dag.’ On balance it is easier to believe that a word answering to
‘gvðvm/gðdumm’ has been omitted in L1 than that a word answering
to ‘Thyrs dag’ has been omitted in S and H. But it may be that in the
phrase ‘sva sem var at kalla’ Jón lærði and H preserve a better reading
than L and S.
(ii) In the opening paragraphs of his Tíðfordríf Jón lærði confuses
Erfurt with Herford and apparently Jón helgi with father and son,
Bishop ísleifr and Bishop Gizurr. He writes: ‘Jón Augmundsson fyrsti
Hólabiskup stúderaði til Erffurt, er þá á gamla norrænu kallaðist Her-
forda, og þaðan stúdentar Herfordensis.’ S2 1/17 and L1 2/20 (partly
defective through omission) agree in saying ‘JsleifR var lærðr aSax-
landi i borg þeiri er Herfvrða heitir’; later S2 2/13-14 has ‘Gizvr var
lærðr. i Herfvrðv aSaxlandi’, while L1 6/26 reads: ‘Gíszur var lærðr i
borg Herefordensi ai Saxlandi’. That Jón lærði misremembered a text
of the L recension is a straightforward conclusion.
6. As noted above, p. 222*, Bishop Finnur Jónsson (1704-89) made
use of his father’s materials on Jón helgi when he put together his Ice-
landic church history and he may have inherited the notion of Jóns
saga as “figmentarum nugarumqve papisticarum plena, manifestusqve
otiosorum monachorum foetus” (Historia eccl. IV, Præfatio, b2v). In
the course of his work he came to know that Gunnlaugr Leifsson was
the author of a Latin life of Bishop Jón, “qvæ adhuc exstat, scripta est
anteqvam templum Holanum corruit” (IV, 137, as an addition to I,
212). The information seems based on L 1/23-24, 24/19-20 (cf. L
24/7-8). Since there is no sign that the L recension was otherwise
known to sr. Jón Halldórsson or Bishop Finnur (their awareness of sto-
ries about Sæmundr/ród/’s escape from some master wizard abroad,
cf. Historia eccl. I, 199, n. (a), hardly needed prompting from this par-
ticular text), it seems likely that this, and possibly the description of