Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series A - 01.10.2003, Page 93
Provenance and external features
75*
new chapter. The explanation is obviously not that these chapters had been
allocated to a scribe who wrote in a hand too spacious for the room allowed
for him; they are more likely to have been a later addition, probably
contemporary with Hand ii taking over at f. 7rb.ll. The reason for leaving
most of a column blank at the beginning of a text could be that the
exemplar was defective at the beginning, but that it was intended to fill in
the missing text later when a suitable exemplar became available. If this is
the correct explanation here, one would expect the first three chapters in M
to be copied from a different source from what follows. In chapters 1-3 in
M such a change of exemplar may very well have happened, but if so, the
second exemplar could have belonged to the same branch of the manuscript
tradition as the remainder of M. In these chapters, the only manuscripts
available for comparison are G and the paper manuscripts of the “Vatns-
hyrna class” (*A). All three texts, M, G and *A, contain a fair number of
individual errors which show nothing about the textual relationship, but
there is one rather spectacular error common to M and *A: M 1.5-6 reads:
‘Biorn Ketils s(on) var foostradur austur æ JamtaMandi med jarlli þeim er
Kiallakur het en Giaflaug h(et) d(ottir) hans’. The error is an omission after
‘h(et)’, and G’s text is obviously superior: ‘... er Kiallakr het uitur madr ok
agætur. jallen atti s(on) er Biorn het enn Giaflög het d(otter) hans’ (a
haplography from one ‘het’ to the next). The error does not, however, prove
that the second exemplar was of the A class, since it may go back to *C (see
the stemma on p. 17*), and, conversely, M does not share the omission of
the clause ‘oc gerdu honum niosn’ (M 2.10) which is a hallmark of the A •
class. Chapters 1-3 contain no errors common to M and G that might
indicate affiliation to the B class, and we may conclude that the supposed
second exemplar probably belonged to the C class but cannot be otherwise
specified, given the lack of material for comparison.
Non-textual entries
In addition to the information written by Arni Magnússon on the separate
slip and on ff. 9 and 10, referred to above, there are the following entries by
him that do not form part of the text:
f. 3r at head: ‘Ur Vatzdæla Sögu.’
f. 5ra at foot: ‘Ur Flöamanna Saugu.’
f. 5rb at foot: ‘Upphaf Eyrbyggia Saugu.’
f. 7r at head: ‘[Ur Eyrbjyggia Sögu.’ The top of this leaf has been cut
off obliquely, removing about half of Arni’s writing.