Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series A - 01.06.1997, Síða 28
XXVI
AM181 g,fol. (= A3)
AM 181g fol. contains only Mírmanns saga. It offers the saga complete from
beginning to end, but it is a composite manuscript consisting of two distinct
parts. The first, ff. 1-10, contains most of the saga, stopping (as does 179)
with the words ‘og hugda eg’ (A 2494), the rest of f. lOr-v having been left
blank. The second, ff. 11-13, on different paper and in a different hand, con-
tains an ending of the saga, and was evidently added to make good the want
of an ending in ff. 1-10; it is treated separately in this edition (p.cxLVii).
Ff. 1-10 of 18lg have long been recognised as part of a large codex which
Árni Magnússon divided up. The extant parts are AM 121 fol., 158 fol., 181a-h
and k-1 fol., 204 fol. and 326c 4to. An old foliation shows that a substantial
number of leaves are now missing. There is also evidence that the codex was
but one of two, the other having been destroyed by fire in 1728.
Like other extant parts, 18lg has an added flyleaf, on which Árni Magnús-
son has written the title of the saga. More than one part, though not 18 lg, con-
tains a note by Árni Magnússon to the effect that it is a part of séra Þorsteinn
Björnsson’s book, which lawman Sigurður Björnsson owned afterwards. Séra
Þorsteinn Björnsson, c. 1612-75, was appointed assistant to séra Bergsveinn
Einarsson at Utskálar in 1636, became vicar there in 1638, was defrocked in
1660, and lived after that at Setberg. His huge compilation is one of the
seventeenth-century’s most significant achievements of its kind, and is now
important also for the textual value of the copies it preserves. The main hand
in it is probably Þorsteinn Björnsson’s, and it is likely that most of it was writ-
ten in the 1640s. See further Árni Bjömsson 1969, li-lii, and Springborg
1977, 81-6.
Little is known about the later history of the book in Iceland. Some of its
contents were copied, and if it is correct that Erex saga in BL Add. 4859 was
copied directly from AM 181 b fol. (Blaisdell 1965, xlvii; cf. below, p.Lvm),
the book will have been at Vigur or nearby in part of the 1690s.
The AM 181 manuscripts contain 112 folios bearing old foliation numbers
within the range 387-548. There are several gaps in the numbering where
leaves have been lost, but the surviving parts, except for the last page (f.
548v), are a collection of romances, fourteen in number, plus one cancelled
page of a fifteenth (f. 472v). Eight of the fifteen, it is believed, are derived
from S6, four from AM 589 4to, and one, with a change of exemplar, from
both these manuscripts. The other two sagas, it has been argued, may also
have been from these manuscripts, from parts now missing in them (Olsen
1968, 218-19; Skárup 1984, 51-6).
Not everything in S6 and 589 is represented in 181, but this may be at least
partly because of the gaps now in 181. As for any correspondence in order, sa-
gas from the two vellums are mixed with each other in 181, but some sequen-