Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series A - 01.06.1997, Side 16
XIV
Jón Samsonarson. Unlisted. Here referred to by the abbreviation Hd, as it
originated in Hvítidalur.
Magðalena Bragadóttir. Listed: Handrit í fórum Braga Húnfjörðs í Stykkis-
hólmi, 1. handrit í 4to. Here referred to by the abbreviation P, as it originated
on Purkey.
Sveinn Björnsson. Listed: Handrit í fórum Sveins Björnssonar í Hvammi í
Dölum, Seinni bók. Here referred to as a manuscript in Hvammur, abbrevi-
ated Hv.
The manuscripts in the major collections are commonly referred to in this
edition by number alone, except for those in Stockholm, for which the
abbreviations used are S6, S17 and S47. The manuscripts contain six main
texts of the saga, lettered from A to F in this edition. In addition, the sigla A',
A2 etc. as far as A7 are used for the texts in respectively S6, 179, 18 lg, 1000,
634, 59 and 45.
There is a transcript of S6 by C. R. Unger in the University Library, Oslo,
made apparently in 1856-7 (Slay 1972, 10-11).
There is a résumé of the saga in Ny kgl. sml. 1144, fol. in the Royal Libra-
ry, Copenhagen.
A few sentences from the saga were printed in J. W. Liffman and George
Stephens, Herr Ivan Lejon-Riddaren, Stockholm 1849, cxxxiv-cxxxv, in the
course of a description of S6; they correspond to A 1M and ll87-88 in the
present edition. Three extracts from the saga were printed from S6 by C. R.
Unger in his Oldnorsk Læsebog, Christiania 1863, 67-79; they correspond to
A l2-27, 2l6-471 and 72-1032.
There have been three editions of the saga:
1. Eugen Kölbing, Riddarasögur, Strassburg 1872, 137-213.
2. Einar Þórðarson, Mírmans saga riddara, Reykjavík 1884.
3. Bjarni Vilhjálmsson, Riddarasögur, Reykjavík 1949-51, III (1949) 1-94.
Kölbing’s book was invaluable as the first edition of the four romances it
contains. His procedure with Mírmanns saga was correct. He printed both the
medieval manuscripts, S6 and 593, calling them A and C. He supplemented
the deficient S6 with the seventeenth-century manuscripts 179 and the older
part of 181, as far as these went. He then also printed the end of the saga frorn
the separate leaves at the end of 181, recognizing nonetheless that it does not
represent the A-version (p. xlii).
The second and third editions, intended for popular reading, were based on
the first, as their editors acknowledge. Einar Þórðarson’s edition has in its
J