Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series A - 01.06.1997, Qupperneq 60
LVIll
Whether the main part of the manuscript was written at Vigur or some-
where else, the parts by Magnús Ketilsson will most probably have been writ-
ten there, as he was living there with Magnús Jónsson, his distant relative,
who had taken him under his wing on the death of his father some years be-
fore. It is not possible to see whether he added leaves at any point, as the
manuscript was rebound in 1971; no record was made of codicological mat-
ters.
There are a few later marginal notes to one of the sagas, and a lacuna has
been filled in space left blank in another (f. 51v). Two names occur in a note
now incomplete on a slip of paper stuck to f. 279r, ‘Setzelia Sigurdardotter a
Svan|grund og Sigridur Teitsdotter a E...’. There is a Svangrund not far from
Þingeyrar (cf. next paragraph).
Those manuscripts of Magnús Jónsson’s large collection which have sur-
vived are now in libraries in various countries. Jón Þorkelsson (1892, 201-4)
showed that the history of some of them, including 4859, is that they passed
on his death in 1702 to his son-in-law Páll Vidalín, then on his death in 1727
to his son-in-law Bjarni Halldórsson (ÍÆ, I 169-70). The latter was
sýslumaður of Húnavatnssýsla from 1728 on, and lived at Þingeyrar from
1737 to his death in January 1773. They were then bought for Sir Joseph
Banks and sent to him, and he presented them to the British Museum a few
years later. 4859 is now vol. III in the Banks Collection; earlier it was ‘No 33’
(f. 1).
Mírmanns saga, on ff. 15r-31v, is well set out, as might be expected. It has
a decorated title, ‘Hier byriar Myrmans saughu’, followed in the next line by
‘CAP. I’. The text begins with a large and elaborate initial, one of the largest
in the manuscript. The first line is also written large. The subsequent chapters
are merely numbered, II-XXVII, and each begins with a fairly large initial,
some plain, some decorated, some with faces drawn in them. There is also a
face drawn near the catchword on f. 20v, and there is a pointing hand on f.
25v opposite the reference to Rollant (A 1764). There is a catchword on each
page except the last, where the saga ends in the top half of the page and the
rest is left blank. There is a heading on each opening, ‘Myrmantz Saga’,
spelled with ‘z’ or ‘s’, only once with ‘i’.
Three of the romances in 4859 have been edited recently, Erex saga, ívens
saga and MQttuls saga, and the opinion of the editors is that these sagas are
derived, in whole or in part, from AM 181 a and 181 b fol, parts of Þorsteinn
Björnsson’s great book (Blaisdell 1965, Blaisdell 1979b and Kalinke 1987).
Blaisdell goes so far as to assert that the copyist of 4859 must have been
using 181 b itself (1965, xlvii); this seems to be so, although the first of the
three pieces of evidence he adduces only strengthens the view that 18 lb is the
ultimate source, and does not rule out the possibility of an intermediate copy.