Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series A - 01.10.2003, Blaðsíða 21

Manuscripts and editions
3*
The majority of the paper manuscripts belong to the ‘A class’, a designation
introduced by Guðbrandur Vigfússon.2 Asgeir Jónsson, ca 1657-1707,
transcribed the text of a manuscript, then in the University Library of
Copenhagen, that perished some 40 years later in the Copenhagen fire of
1728. That manuscript had come to the University Library from Peder
Resen’s collection. It is commonly referred to as Vatnshyrna, but it seems
preferable to write of it as ‘Resen’s manuscript’ (*R),3 or ‘Membr. Res. 5’
(Stefán Karlsson’s term4), a title that assumes no intermediate argumen-
tation. Resen’s manuscript covered the whole saga, and Ásgeir’s transcrip-
tion of it (Aa = AM 448 4to ) was certainly the best basis for a single-text
edition, especially when supplemented with two seventeenth-century paper
copies, by Ketill Jörundsson, 1603-70 (Ak = AM 442 4to) and Jón
Gissursson, 1590-1648 (Aj = AM 126 fol.), which are either copies of *R
or of a manuscript very close to it. Moreover, much of the verse and a little
of the prose in Aa was copied by Árni Magnússon himself, which is
valuable because Árni was an unusually reliable copyist, even as a young
man. The joint evidence or ‘paradosis’5 of Aa, Ak, Aj and Z (IB 180 8vo,
the exemplar of AM 447 4to, for which see immediately below) is here
referred to as *A. Other A-class paper manuscripts, about twenty in
number, are descended from existing manuscripts (Aa, Aj6 and Ak).
The only non-vellum text to be included in this volume is AM 447 4to
(447), which preserves a large number of readings of M in parts of the saga
where M is now deficient, in the form of corrections, interlinear additions
and marginalia, written by séra Þórður Jónsson of Hítardalur, ca 1609-70.
The special significance of these additions in 447 was not known to pre-
vious editors.
2 Guðbrandur Vigfússon 1864, p. xxiii.
3 Guðbrandur Vigfússon 1864, p. xxiii, calls the MS ‘Codex Resenianus’.
4 Stefán Karlsson 1970c.
5 West 1973, p. 53.
6 A feature that distinguishes descendants of Aj is the incorporation, in the narrative about the bur-
ial of Þórgunna, of a verse, probably from a folk-tale: “og er hun var nidur sett heyrdist monnum
medan þeir voru ad þessu starffe Þorgunn mæla Kallt ái fótum manaliötur, þa var suarad. þad
giorer fáar vnna Þorgunna.” There are many paper manuscripts in this subclass. On this matter of
the possible folk-tale influence see Olafur Halldórsson 1986. It seems there is no other early re-
ference outside Eyrbyggja saga to this curious tale. References to the story are also found in
Konrad Maurer 1860, p. 61, and, following Maurer, in Jón Ámason 1862-4 (1954-61), vol. 1, p.
227 (p. 220).