Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series A - 01.06.1997, Blaðsíða 59

LVII
17.72
19.24
23.9
þaugdu]sögðu
vnnit] verit
þess] þeim
There are very few additions (such as ‘út’ after ‘leyster’ at 187). Accidental
changes in word-order have usually been corrected.
3.3 Derived from A3 and A3/E
BLAdd. 4859
Add. 4859, a folio manuscript of 370 leaves, plus one unused leaf at the end,
contains twenty-four sagas; for detailed descriptions, see BL Catalogue 1977,
234-5 and 237-41, and Jón Helgason forthcoming. According to the elaborate
title-page, borne out by the implication of a note by the main scribe on f. 74v
where he says Samsons sagafagra is omitted ‘med þui hun er aadur feinginn
og jnn skrifud aa adrar spgu bækur virduglegz hpffdingia Magnusar Jönsson-
ar’, the anthology was written for Magnús Jónsson of Vigur (1637-1702). On
Magnús and his books, see Jón Helgason 1955, B 7-14.
The scribe has given his initials ‘J. Þ. s m E h’ at the end of the note on f.
74, and also at the end of another on f. 162v, and in the course of the latter he
has given his name as Jón Þórðarson. He is named as the writer of the manu-
script on the title-page, but this page is not his work. He copied twenty-one of
the sagas in the manuscript, including Mírmanns saga. No date is given for
the writing of Mírmanns saga, but eleven of the sagas are said to have been
finished at various dates in 1693, 1694 and 1695. They do not stand in the or-
der in which they were written.
Little is known about Jón Þórðarson except that he wrote manuscripts for
Magnús Jónsson. One contains a saga said to have been ended in Strandseljar
in 1679; another now lost is reported as having been written in part at Kálfa-
vík in 1699 and 1700. He died in the period 1700-03. Kálfavík, on the main-
land opposite Vigur, may have been his home (cf. Loth 1978, 40-1).
A second scribe has been responsible for the other items in the manuscript,
and he has been identified as Magnús Ketilsson (Loth 1967a, 95-9). He ap-
pears to have begun by adding the story of Callinius on ff. 142v-145v, and
then writing the title-page, f. lr, with the date 1696 on it (MDCLXLVI, cor-
rected from MLXLVI), and a list of contents, f. lv, including ‘Þ: Af Callinio’
in its place. He wrote two other items, on ff. 313 and 367-70, dating the latter
1697, and he added the title of the first at the side of the list of contents on f.
lv, and that of the second below the end of it. Here he also noted that the book
contained twenty-four items in all, which is correct. Two other titles have
been written in the margin of the list of contents as if these works too have
been added to the manuscript, but they are not to be found in it.