Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series A - 01.06.1997, Side 133

IV. THE C-TEXT
Papp. fol. nr 17
Papp. fol. nr 17, here referred to as S17, has been described and carefully dis-
cussed in Jensen 1983, ccxvii-ccxxii and ccxxvm-ccxxxii, where refe-
rences to earlier work on the manuscript are given. It is regrettably the case
that we do not know where, quite when, by whom and for whom this intrigu-
ing and important manuscript was written, nor what its early history was. The
circumstances are such that it looks as if it ought to be possible to answer
these questions, but prolonged attempts to do so in connection with the pre-
sent edition, before and after the appearance of Helle Jensen’s work, have not
produced a satisfying result.
S17 contains six sagas:
Hrólfs saga Gautrekssonar, ff. 1-75
Qrvar-Odds saga, 76-96, incomplete, the end lost in a lacuna
Mírmanns saga, 97-132r8, incomplete, the beginning lost in the same
lacuna
Eiríks saga víðfyrla, 132r9-138r (138v-140 blank)
Jómsvíkinga saga, 141-182r (182v-184 blank)
Asmundar saga kappabana 185-200 (200v blank).
The gatherings are normally of eight leaves. The first four sagas cross gather-
ing boundaries, or can be calculated as having done so originally before the
lacuna occurred. But Eiríks saga ends with a gathering of only four leaves,
some of them blank, thereby concluding the first part of the manuscript.
There follow two further parts: Jómsvíkinga saga occupies six gatherings, the
last containing only four leaves, some of them blank, and Ásmundar saga
occupies two gatherings.
Each saga is accompanied by a Danish translation, made apparently from
the text in S17, and by someone for whom Danish was not his mother-tongue
(Jensen 1983, ccxxii). For the most part the manuscript is in two columns,
with the Icelandic in the inner (and by accident in the outer, in Mírmanns
saga, on f. 97v). But at the beginning of Jómsvíkinga saga, on ff. 141-56,
which comprise two gatherings, the translation is interlinear, and these pages
are single column (except the facing ff. 144v-145r).
There are also glosses and explanations by the scribe in the margins, or in
the case of Mírmanns saga and Eiríks saga in brackets within the text of the