Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series A - 01.06.1997, Side 371
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9. Comment
The form of the name with ‘t’ is widespread in the paper manuscripts (but
not universal), and it is also the form found in the rímur. But this is not a de-
cisive factor in the choice between the possible forms for the name of the hero
of the medieval saga. Little or no value attaches to 152 as evidence, as it came
into being in the nineteenth century, and it is hardly independent of the rímur.
Further, it can be seen in the cases of 18lg, S47 and 4859 that those manu-
scripts are in varying degrees not to be relied on as evidence for the form of
the name in their exemplars, medieval or otherwise. Finally, in the case of
S17, the faithfulness of this manuscript to its exemplar in this matter cannot
be tested, but the occasional instances in it of the name without ‘t’ may well
be taken to indicate that both forms were present in the exemplar somewhere
or other.
It might secondly be said in favour of ‘Mírmant’ with a ‘t’ that it occurs in
both the existing medieval manuscripts. It is also the only form in one of
them, 593a, but this is of little weight since there are only two examples. It is
unfortunate that 593a lacks the beginning of the saga, where the name would
have been written out in chapter 2, at the first occurrence at least.
On the other hand, the evidence of the oldest existing manuscript, S6,
which has both forms, in eleven examples, suggests that ‘Mírmann’ without a
‘t’ is the form to be preferred. This is reinforced by 179, Jón Erlendsson’s
copy of S6, and also by the other texts thought to be derived from S6.
The text in S6 and the continuation in 179 were printed as the top text in
EK, with larger print, and this was the basis of the editions EÞ and BV. These
therefore use the form without ‘t’, though differing over ‘n’ and ‘nn’ in the
oblique cases, and as EK did not reproduce the occasional ‘-i’ forms of 179,
they have uniformly an endingless dative. In the present edition, the preferred
forms are nominative, accusative and dative ‘Mírmann’, genitive ‘Mír-
manns’.