Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series A - 01.06.1997, Page 19

XVII
All but four of the gatherings that have survived in part or in whole seem to
have had eight leaves each. Two of the exceptions, one with four leaves, and
another with twelve after the insertion of four in the middle of an original
eight, are due to the addition of material by the scribes. The other two had
seven leaves each, three bifolia and a single leaf, the latter now lost. The ex-
planation for this abnormal make-up may in both cases be simply the availa-
bility of a piece of parchment not large enough for a bifolium and the scribe’s
willingness to use it; he has used originally single leaves twice elsewhere,
with flaps on them, but in pairs (Slay 1969, 273; for a different suggestion,
see Blaisdell 1979b, xvm-xix).
All the original contents of S6 have been written by one man, scribe A, ex-
cept for the ending of one saga, which was written by scribe B on leaves left
blank at the end of a gathering by scribe A and on additional leaves. Stefán
Karlsson (1967) has identified these hands with two of the hands in Perg. fol.
nr 1 (Bergsbók), and shown from developments in the handwriting that scribe
A worked now on one manuscript, now on the other. He has also found that
hand B is the same as that in almost the whole of Ny kgl. sml. 1824b, 4to
(Stefán Karlsson 1970). From their cooperation with each other it is evident
that scribes A and B were contemporaries. No precise date or place of origin
can be established for any of these manuscripts, but they may be assigned to
c. 1400 or the beginning of the fifteenth century; the latter is preferred in
ONP, 474, following Stefán Karlsson 1967, 82.
Little is known about the history of S6. It appears from the handwriting of
some verses written in a space in the manuscript in the latter part of the fif-
teenth century that it may have been in the Northern Quarter of Iceland at that
time. In the seventeenth century, however, its associations are all with the
western end of the Southern Quarter. It is generally agreed that it was twice
copied there, by or for séra Þorsteinn Björnsson at Utskálar, and by séra Jón
Erlendsson at Villingaholt, and it seems to have left the country through the
hands of séra Einar Einarsson of Garðar in Alptanes (d. 1690). Various state-
ments of ownership, names and initials in the manuscript pertain to this peri-
od, and the conjectures that have been made about them, though uncertain,
connect them with people known to have lived in this area. Finally, S6 was
recorded in an inventory of the collections of the Archivum Antiqvitatum in
Stockholm in 1693; that it had reached Stockholm earlier than that is apparent
from the fact that a part of it had been copied there in 1690. (Stefán Karlsson
1967, 74; Slay 1972, 22-5; Ólafur Halldórsson 1973, 286-7.)
Mírmanns saga is incomplete in S6. Except for two words in the first line,
‘alda amen’, which are the end of the saga which originally preceded it (Slay
1969, 276-7; 1986, 63-5), it occupies one complete gathering, ff. 62-9, after
which there is a lacuna. Chapters are not numbered, but begin with large ini-