Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series A - 01.10.2003, Blaðsíða 22

4*
General introduction
B. Editorial policy in previous editions
Eyrbyggja saga was first edited by Grímur J(ónsson) Thorkelin, Havniæ
(Copenhagen) 1787.7 The edition contains a Latin translation, one used by
Sir Walter Scott when preparing his abstract of the saga.8 Thorkelin based
his edition on AM 449 4to,9 but quotes a number of other Arnamagnæan
manuscripts: folios 123, 124, 125, 130, 131, quartos 441, 443, 444, 446,
447, some of which he identifies as copied from 442 (Ak), “chartæ niti-
dissimæ . . . sacerdotis Jörundi Ketillini (sic) manu exaratæ”, some from
the fragment 445 (sic, i e AM 445 b 4to = M). Of the latter he prints (on p.
v) a painstakingly drawn copy, presumably by an artist, of a passage from
M, f. 9va, Hand iii, 42.33-5 ‘þar var Þ(or)g(vnna) - likmenrar’ (the final
<a) of ‘fara’ is missing and the copy ends without completing the last
word).
Guðbrandur Vigfússon’s 1864 edition contains a normalized *A text
with selected variants from other manuscripts. He added some passages
from W, M and E as samples (‘Proben’), and he remarks, in his post-
humously published Origines Islandicæ, “it is a pity that no exact transcript
of [W] has ever been printed”10 - a sentence that has encouraged the
present enterprise.
Guðbrandur distinguished between three classes of manuscripts of the
saga, A, B, and C.* 11 Guðbrandur’s A class has already been introduced. His
B class comprises our W, G, and E (apart from some paper manuscripts),
while his C class has M as its only member.
The manuscripts of the A class share a number of distinguishing features,
most noticeably the placing of the short chapter that deals with the emi-
gration of most of the sons of Þorbrandr to Greenland before the chapter on
the introduction of Christianity, rather than after the Fróðárundr, see
below, p. 13*.
Guðbrandur believed that M (his C) contained a mixed text;12 the first
and last leaves he grouped with the A class, but the middle ones with the B
class. Hugo Gering, in his edition of the saga, considered this to be one of
Guðbrandur’s many nonchalant assertions, for which his precipitate
7 Thorkelin was the Icelander who discovered the manuscript of Beowulf in the British Museum.
8 Sir Walter Scott 1814.
9 See below, p. 76*.
10 Guðbrandur Vigfússon and F. York Powell 1905, vol. II, p. 89.
11 Guðbrandur Vigfússon 1864, pp. xxiii-xxxii.
12 Guðbrandur Vigfússon 1864, p. xxii, states “. . . eine dritte Classe, C, steht zwischen beiden
[/ e A and B] . . .”. On p. xxxi, he elaborates the point: “[C mag] nach Hdss. theils der A-Classe,
theils der B-Classe geschrieben sein”.