Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series A - 01.10.2003, Page 105
Linguistic and textual features
87*
5. ERRORS AND UNIQUE READINGS
At 2.12 a clause is missing in M, the equivalent of G’s ‘þuiat þa uar uetrar
megn mikid suoat hann treystiz eigi at hafit at sigla’ (G 2.12-13). The
omission cannot quite be accounted for by assuming a haplography of ‘for
. . . for’. Aa has wording similar to that of G.
‘Hafs vog’ 4.18, for ‘Hofs vog’.
‘almbreka’ 4.41 (other MSS ‘alfreka’) is unique.
‘f(adir)M 7.4, for ‘s(on)’.
‘Vthvala’ 7.6 (‘urthvala’ *A, ‘huala’ G).
‘ok [beiddi] hvor[igr anna/i] vel lifva’ 17.52-3 is unique.
‘ohol’ 17.106 (verse): while the identity of the negating prefix is not in
doubt, the word ‘ohol’ appears to introduce a superfluous negative term.
The *A MSS read (Aa text) ‘mæli ek hol (Z: huol) íyrer hæli.’; G, which is
frequently erratic when copying verse, reads ‘mæleg liod íirer flode’ 17.96.
Apart from faulty sense and lack of support from the other MSS, the M
reading is metrically faulty.
B. Hand II
1. PALAEOGRAPHY
Individual letters In general the characters of Hand ii present a markedly
‘hooked’ appearance. Of the basic letters, (o) is fundamentally oval, some-
times tapering towards the top; it has a hook at the bottom right except
when final. The stems of (b), (h), (k), (1) and ‘tall’ (s> start with a curve
from the right. (þ> has a double, looped steni.
(d> is delta-shaped. (e) has two main forms that are quite distinct, one of
them resembling a normal (e> inverted. (f> has the insular form only. (i)
sometimes carries a non-significant oblique stroke, which is ignored in the
transcription. (j> is sometimes used, without phonemic significance, for
initial jlilí ‘Jonm’ 1.5 - ‘j’ 1.7 - ‘jn/z’ 48.13 (x ca 50). The loop of (j> is
usually closed. (n> is at times hard to distinguish from (u). (r) does not
appear in its rotunda form; when final the vertical of the letter is sometimes
stretched laterally. (s> is usually tall, the upright part descending below the
line of writing; (s> occurs also in a form derived from the majuscule and
rather similar to ‘inverted’ (e>, chiefly in the third stretch ‘sem’ 48.7, ‘sin’
48.12. (t)’s upright occasionally fails to pierce the cross-bar. In initial
position, (u> is more common than (v), ca 235:25; elsewhere it is even
more frequent, ca 435:3. (y> has a tail that starts towards the left and then
turns down; the tail varies in length and thickness.