Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series A - 01.10.2003, Blaðsíða 70

52*
W (Wolfenbiittel 9.10. Aug. 4to)
The hand is an upright one but with an occasional tendency to slope
backwards. It has a ‘staccato’ appearance; although the letters are written
close and sometimes rest against one another, they are seldom fully joined.
It makes a rather untidy impression on the reader, but the scribe had trouble
with his material, as can be seen from his marginal comment on f. 3v ‘alillt
bokfelli’.
Stock of letters
Individual letters <o> is slightly oval; <i) has a straight upright but
sometimes an introductory hook, as is the case also with <m> and <n>; in
such letters the top is often thick, with the leg tapering to a point at the foot.
The tall letters <b>, <h>, <k>, <1>, <þ> have neither loop nor hook, but
sometimes a thickening at the top preparatory to the downstroke. Of the
remaining letters it may be remarked that (Carolingian) <a> usually has a
rather thin bow; <c> does not occur except in numerals: ‘.ccc.’ 33.19, ‘cccc.
hundrut’ 44.9 (ct ‘.u. hundrut’ 44.16 (= 500)). <d) may bend backwards,
crossing over previous letters even horizontally, ‘uillda’ 25.58; the right-
hand end of <ð>’s crossbar may droop a little, but this bar may be inserted
in various ways; occasionally <d> and <ð> are not clearly distinguishable.
<f> is insular; the nether loop reaches the foot of the vertical and sometimes
pierces it; <g> has a strongly written nether bow, but its right side is usually
continuously vertical; <h> is plain and the right leg goes only slightly below
the base line. <r> appears both in plain and rotunda form; the latter is found
as usual after <o> ‘for’ 24.55, <b> ‘broður’ 24.67, <d> ‘dratt’ 24.60, <ð>
‘uerðr’ 24.54, but also after <g> ‘Græmdandz’ 24.55; the r rotunda used is
a distinctive one with the tail curving down well below the line, the letter
sometimes resembling a <3>. <s> is usually tall ‘sárum’ 20.5, with the
vertical (the top of which is often thick) extending a little below the line;
round <s> is usually confined to its conjunction with superscript abbre-
viations e g ‘þessum’ 20.5, ‘ser' 25.81, and its use for the initial letter of a
word, where it is usually to be interpreted as a majuscule e g ‘Seg’ 25.71. It
is impossible to distinguish <u> from <v> in all cases, so ‘u’ has been
universally used in this transcription; occasionally, however, capital <V> is
distinguishable, see p. 54*. <w> occurs, as <w>, in ‘wlfuð’ (= úlfúð) 24.60
(sole); <x> has a median bar when forming part of a numeral ‘.xiij.’ 45.44;
<y> has an individual shape, closest to Spehr’s ‘y5’,28 the top v-shape is
quite small and the tail, descending from the left, finishes with a horizontal
stroke to the right; the letter usually has a (traditional) superscript dot. <z>
28 C/Hreinn Benediktsson 1965, p. 24.