Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series A - 01.10.2003, Page 95
The JH fragment
77*
M was made considerable use of by Thorkelin and the text of his edition
is prefaced by three lines printed from a hand-written facsimile of f. 9va
(the page of M that is clearest to read): ‘þr vr ,þ?g. - þa .m. likmnir(-)’,
42.133-35 in this edition (c/p. 4* above).
The tops of several of the leaves have been cut off subsequent to the
above entries. If the surmise is correct that the page numbers were written
in when the 1787 edition was being prepared, the trimming of the leaves
must have been done at some time after that date or at the earliest only a
few years previously, when the editing was being done.
2. The JH fragment
In addition to the seven leaves of AM 445 b 4to there survives a small
fragment of the Eyrbyggja saga text of M, formerly in the possession of
Professor Jón Helgason, now in The Arnamagnæan Institute in Reykjavík.
The present editor inspected the fragment at The Arnamagnæan Institute in
Copenhagen in the early 1970s. It was kept in an envelope bearing two
inscriptions: one, in an older hand, “Skinnblaðsræma úr Eyrbyggju”, the
other, in Jón Helgason’s hand, “Úr Þingholtsstræti, frá Vald. Ásm.”. This
envelope was placed inside a newer one, on which Jón Helgason had
written: “Eyrbyggja 'kap/ 25-26 (Melabók)”. These materials had been
enclosed in a protective folder by the book-binder Birgitte Dall, who had
contributed a label to the folder that read: “Perg. fragment ‘indsamlet’ af
Professor Jón Helgason under rejse pá Island August 1970” (Vellum
fragment ‘collected’ by Professor Jón Helgason during a trip to Iceland -
August 1970). Jón Helgason kindly informed me that the fragment came to
him through a distant cousin, a policeman who had been commissioned to
clear out débris from a house in Þingholtsstræti (Reykjavík) that had
belonged to Valdimar Ásmundarson8 (d. 1902) and later to his widow Bríet
Bjarnhéðinsdóttir (d. 1940). The policeman, whose name was not
mentioned in this conversation,9 had recognized the little strip of vellum as
having once formed part of a manuscript.
The fragment has a row of sewing holes parallel to one of its longer
edges and has apparently been used in a book-binding. It is not known how
it came into the possession of Valdimar Ásmundarson.
8 Valdimar Ásmundarson was the editor of a number of popular editions of sagas, including Eyr-
byggja saga, 1895, vol. 12 in the series fslendinga sögur, 1891-1902.
1 His identity has later been established as Björn Jónsson from Haukagil in Hvítársíða (Borg.),
1915-92. Bjöm’s grandfather and Jón Helgason’s father were brothers.