Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series A - 01.06.1997, Page 35
XXXIII
1000), and variants are printed from it for comparison with 1000 where this
provides the text (A 2495-2640).
ÍBR 45, 8vo (= A7)
IBR 45 8vo is an anthology of sagas and rímur, containing also ‘málrúnir’, a
kind of alphabet. It is an unpretentious manuscript, like many others of its
time, but nonetheless colours have been used occasionally for decorative ef-
fect, including red on the initial A with which Mírmanns saga begins. Several
items are dated in 1838 or 1839, including Mírmanns saga, ‘Endad ad skrifa dg
1 October | 1838’. The scribe has given his initials BJS on one occasion in 45,
and two other manuscripts, IBR 44 and 46 8vo, written in 1853-4, also contain
these initials and are in the same hand. He is named in the catalogue as Bjarni
Jónsson, and said in the Index (Skrá, III483) to be ‘líkl. Árnesingr’. However,
a pencilled note on f. lr of 46 calls him ‘Bjami Jonss. i Landeyum’, which
would place him in the neighbouring Rangárvallasýsla.
All three manuscripts have been incorporated in a collection, which ran to
fourteen volumes, nine of which are catalogued together. 45 has had a title
page added, reading ‘SÖGU-1 -safn | XIII’ and at the foot ‘med hendi | Bjarna
Jónssonar’. This is followed by an added contents page. There is a corre-
sponding label on the spine. (44 and 46 have had similar title pages added, but
unlike 45 also contain original title pages and contents lists.)
Narrow strips of paper have been stuck to the edges of pages to strengthen
them quite frequently. The text is not usually affected, but on p. 21, where it is
much affected, words and letters have been written on the repair, in a different
hand. New leaves have been inserted in two places, pp. 83-4 and 163-4. Text
has been written on part of p. 83, but not enough to make good the lacuna. By
contrast, pp. 163-4, which are in Mírmanns saga, are crammed with text, and
it does fill the lacuna in a fashion, though not exactly (see below, pp.LXXvm-
lxxix). The writing on these new leaves is in different hands.
The manuscript has been trimmed close. The bottom line of text has been
affected occasionally, and words have been written in above it.
The pagination has two errors: the numbers 243-4 were not used, and some
of the numbers in the 160s (in Mírmanns saga) were written with 5 instead of
6. There are no pp. 311-90 in the manuscript. It is quite likely that they once
existed and have been lost; their position is between complete texts and com-
plete gatherings.
Mírmanns saga is on pp. 140-216, of which pp. 163-4 are a new leaf replac-
ing the last leaf of a gathering. The saga is also individually paginated, as are
the other works in the manuscript. The chapters are numbered 1-8 and 10-21
on the original leaves, with the divisions occurring in the same places as in
1000 (above, p.xxix), but there are two chapter divisions on the new leaf, 9 and