Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series A - 01.06.1997, Side 127

cxxv
preceding, and they make the name ‘þordur ellen(ds> s(on>’.
84v Gudmundur Jons son
107v Þessa Bok a Syra Einar | Þordar son med Riettu | Enn Ein-
ginn Annar Anno i60[9]. This is all very worn and difficult
to read, even with ultra-violet light photographs.
Séra Einar Þórðarson (ÍÆ, I 391) became vicar of Melar, Borgarfjarðarsýsla,
in 1581, held the living until c. 1620, and died in or after 1630. It is not known
who Guðmundur Jónsson was, but Þórður Erlendsson could be the man of
that name who was the son of Katrín, the daughter of séra Einar, and wife of
Erlendur Þorvarðsson. Þórður Erlendsson, lögréttumaður 1663-88, was born
c. 1610-20, and lived at Suður-Reykir, Kjósarsýsla (Lögréttumannatal, 537-
8). The manuscript was later in the possession of Jón Vídalín (b. 1666, bishop
of Skálholt from 1698), and passed to Árni Magnússon in 1702.
The manuscript was deficient when Árni Magnússon obtained it, but there
is evidence that one leaf has been lost since. In AM 18 l g fol (see above,
p.xxvn), Árni Magnússon set a mark in the text at f. 3vb36 (= A 925) and
wrote in the margin ‘hic incipit membr’. 593a was the only vellum he owned
containing Mírmanns saga, but it begins at a point corresponding to 181 g f.
4ra21 (= A 950). The amount of text between these two points in 18lg cor-
responds to one leaf in 593a, and there can be no doubt that the leaf described
above as missing which was the first leaf of the first extant gathering of 593a
and conjugate with f. 7, was still present in Árni Magnússon’s time.
Selected pages have been numbered in Adonias saga, and the number 570
has been written in the margin in the same black ink at four points, presum-
ably in the nineteenth century. The reference is to Adonias saga in AM 570a
4to, and the places are the beginning of the part of the saga preserved in that
manuscript, the beginning of the first lacuna there, the end of the second la-
cuna, and the end of the preserved part (cf. Loth 1963, vm).
There is the usual foliation by Kálund. The manuscript leaves were
smoothed before photography in 1961, and were repaired and set in a new
binding in 1967.
The only indications of period and place of origin of the manuscript are
provided by its palaeography and orthography. Jónas Kristjánsson 1964,
chiefly xli xliii and xlvii-xlviii, with acknowledgement to Stefán Karlsson,
has placed not only this manuscript but also AM 471 4to (another copy of Vik-
tors saga ok Blávus) in the context of the diplomas of the fifteenth century.
The most notable feature of the palaeography of 593 is the very frequent use
of a dot above a vowel, evidently to indicate a long vowel, though there are
exceptions, omissions, and use of alternative methods; the same is true of
471, though the dot may be not quite so frequent there. In the first half of the