Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series A - 01.06.1997, Blaðsíða 56
LIV
ated together (Ivens saga, Parcevals saga, Valvens þáttr and Mírmanns
saga); the fifth is in a wrapper of its own and is paginated (Mgttuls saga). All
have occasional notes about readings, in the same hand as the text.
The copy of MqUuIs saga was used some thirty years later for Gísli Bryn-
júlfsson’s edition (1878), and there are five footnotes in it in his hand, all re-
ferring to vellum fragments. These notes have been altered for printing by
Konráð Gíslason (Kalinke 1987, cxxm), who also gave the text the desired
orthographic conventions, provided the chapters with numbers, and made a
few emendations, which necessitated further footnotes.
The sixth saga, Saga afTristram ok Isodd, copied from AM 489 4to, is in a
different hand. There are marginal notes, some of them altered, all apparently
in the same hand as the text. The notes are the basis of the notes in Gísli Bryn-
júlfsson’s edition of 1851, but some are not used there and others have been
added there. Kalinke (1987, cxxn) identifies this hand with the hand that
wrote the footnotes to MQttuls saga, i.e. Gísli Brynjúlfsson’s. This is doubt-
ful. The marginal note on f. 133r written by him to which Kalinke refers con-
tains in its substance nothing to connect him with this copy of Saga af Tris-
tram ok ísodd, and there are differences in the handwriting; the identification
cannot be made without some other evidence, historical or palaeographical.
The last saga, Flóres saga konungs ok sona hans, copied from AM 343 4to,
is on pages larger than those used for all the other items, and smaller margins
have been left, particularly at the bottom. There are occasional marginal notes
by the copyist, often indicating words in the text which have been taken from
another Arna-Magnæan manuscript. The writing is larger than in the first five
sagas, and does not quite match the extreme neatness of the writing there (‘m’
and ‘n’ seem less painstakingly formed); and it may be mentioned that the nu-
meral 3 in the eight instances in which it occurs is written differently. Al-
though Kalinke regards the hand as the same as that in the first five sagas,
items 1-5, 6 and 7 should probably be separated as the work of three people.
They may all have been Icelandic students, who are mentioned but not named
in the report of the Arna-Magnæan Commission in 1847 (Kalinke 1987, cxxii-
cxxm). Item 6, however, may be the work of Konráð Gíslason, who is said
there to have made some copies some years before, for the hand (though dif-
ferent from his hand in the alterations in item 5) looks much the same as that
in the copies of sagas in AM 403 fol., which Kálund says is Konráð Gísla-
son’s (Kálund 1888-94,1 309).
Mírmanns saga is foliated 132-91. There is a tear in the first leaf, and a
shorter but otherwise coincident tear in the once-conjugate fourth. The first
page and the blank last page are soiled.
In the margin of f. 133r there is a note in pencil, effectively a letter, dated
‘Febr. 71’ and signed ‘GBr’, identified by Kalinke as Gísli Brynjúlfsson.