Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series A - 01.06.1997, Blaðsíða 149
CXLVII
above, pp.LXi. In addition there is one copy of the ending alone, and this is de-
scribed next.
AM 181gfol.,ff. 11-13
When Mírmanns saga was written in Þorsteinn Björnsson’s book (see above,
p.xxvi), later to become 181 g, it ended incomplete on the recto of the tenth leaf,
and the rest of the recto and the whole of the verso were left blank. An ending
has been added however, in 181 g, on different paper of smaller size and in a dif-
ferent hand. Agnete Loth (1967a, 95-9) has shown that these pages, ff. 11-13r,
are in the cursive handwriting of Magnús Ketilsson (who, like numerous other
seventeenth-century Icelandic scribes, was master of two completely different
styles of writing). She noted that there was a complete copy of the saga at Vigur,
namely 4859, and that the textual differences between the two were insignifi-
cant. If the ending had been added to 181g at Vigur, one would expect that it
would have been written on the blank part of the last leaf, or at least on leaves of
the same format as the manuscript. It is much more likely that Árni Magnússon
bespoke this ending of the saga from Magnús Jónsson to make good the lacuna
in his manuscript. She gives references to letters between them where examples
can be found of exchange of manuscripts, requests for copies, etc.
To sum up, it is probable that Þorsteinn Björnsson’s book was at Vigur in
the I690s (see above, p.xxvi), and that items in it including the incomplete
Mírmanns saga were copied in 4859 there; it seems also that an ending was
added to the saga in 4859 as it was being copied but was not added at that
time to ÞB’s book, that ÞB’s book left Vigur, and that Árni Magnússon sub-
sequently had a copy of the ending in 4859 made for him and added it to his
181 g, presumably in the period 1696-1700, when Magnús Ketilsson lived at
Vigur, because after this he lived far away in the Eastern Quarter.1
The ending in 18lg ff. 11-13 has a heading, ‘Nidurlag Myrmanns Spgu’.
This is peculiar to this copy, and arose from the circumstances in which it was
written. It is of interest that the text does not begin with the words which im-
mediately follow the last words on f. 10, ‘og hugda eg’ A 2494, which are in
the middle of a sentence in Mírmann’s account of what he had dreamed. In-
stead, it begins earlier, with the sentence which introduces the dream, ‘Enn
umm nöttina’ etc. A 2491. This makes the piece more complete in itself, as
1 This may serve as a working hypothesis. It is possible to imagine a different sequence of
events. For example: Jón Þorðarson was copying parts of ÞB’s book at Vigur in 1693-95; Magnús
Ketilsson was in Skálholt, and (here the guessing begins) informed of the lacuna in Mírmanns
saga, he copied the ending from a manuscript there and sent it to Vigur; this ending was copied
by Jón Þorðarson in 4859, but it was not copied into the space in ÞB’s book, but was henceforth
kept with the book. (If this were so, the differences between the two texts would be due to inno-
vation in 4859.)