Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series A - 01.10.2003, Page 64
46*
W (Wolfenbiittel 9.10. Aug. 4to)
W seems to have come to Wolfenbiittel between 1649 and 1665, to judge
from the position where it is entered in the catalogue of Duke August’s
library14 - where it has the quite misleading description “ix.x Mscr in 4.
Antiqui Poetae Islandici Poemata”.
At the end of the century, probably in 1697, W was lent to Árni Magn-
ússon in Copenhagen, who had it copied by Ásgeir Jónsson, secretary to the
historian Þormóður Torfason (Torfæus) in Norway; he is known to have
been in Copenhagen in 1697-98.15 In addition to instigating this copy, now
AM 450 a 4to, Árni supplied for W a copy of the missing part of Eyrbyggja
saga, now bound in front of the first vellum leaves. The scribe is not
known, but the copy’s exemplar must have been AM 448 4to (referred to in
this work as Aa).16 The MS was returned to Wolfenbúttel in 1701 (see
below).
The first quarter of AM 450 a 4to (/ e what was lacking in W) was copied
by Ásgeir Jónsson from his own copy, AM 448 4to, of a MS in the Univer-
sity Library in Copenhagen that had belonged to Peder Resen (Membr. Res.
5, also known as Vatnshyrna, see p. 3*). Then follows a copy of f. lr and of
f. lv lines 1-7 (as far as ‘uilldi’ 20.141), in the hand of Árni Magnússon
himself. Lastly comes Ásgeir Jónsson’s transcript of W, which Ámi
corrected. See further under Copies of W p. 50*.
During the Napoleonic wars W had a brief sojourn in Paris, whither it
had been moved as part of the terms made with the French following the
defeat of Prussia at the battle of Jena in 1806. The MS is stamped in two
places with the impression “Bibliothéque Nationale”. It was returned to
Wolfenbúttel in 1815.
The MS came again to Copenhagen in 1847, when Jón Sigurðsson went
through the copies of Eyrbyggja saga and Egils saga, AM 450 a 4to and
AM 461 4to respectively, making corrections, adding chapter titles and
page incipits, together with notes on difficult passages. The MS was sent
back shortly afterwards.
In 1891 Finnur Jónsson consulted the MS in Wolfenbúttel, while pre-
paring Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning.
W came to Copenhagen for a third time in 1952 when the present editor
requested it before beginning work on the saga. It was while it was in
Denmark on this occasion that the Manuscripta Islandica photographic
facsimile edition was prepared.
In front of the extract copied from AM 448 4to (Aa), which supplies a
14 Man Isl III, p. xii.
15 Man Isl III (as previous note).
16 See Man Isl III, p. xiii.