Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series A - 01.10.2003, Blaðsíða 128

106*
G(AM 309 4to)
Magnússon, who was then ardently collecting.4 Such manuscripts would
have been gifts from his father, the bishop. Some of these indeed came
from Gaulverjabær,5 and it would be natural to assume that § 1 of AM 309
4to had followed the same route, were it not that Árni himself writes that he
received it from Jón Vídalín, and that it had earlier belonged to Skálholt
cathedral rather than to Bishop Brynjólfur personally. This information is
provided in AM 435 a 4to, Árni’s own catalogue, f. 58v: “4to majori, öin-
bunded. feinged af Mag. Jone Wid(alin). hefur fyrrum heyrt Skalholltz
k/rkiu til”, to which is added, in darker ink, “eda og leigid i Skalhollte ept-
er, af bokum Mag. Bryniolfs. þö mun hitt helldur uera.” This note refers to
§ 1 (ff. 1-26).
Then follows, “þetta þrennt minner mig eg femged hafi fra Bæ i Floa. Er
manifeste ur sama Codice, og lagde eg þad þvi þar saman vid: ut voluminis
antiqva ratio I: (quantvm in me esset) I: sibi constaret.”6. By this ‘tripartite
volume’ Árni Magnússon refers to § 1 (from Flateyjarbók) and § 2 (the
fragments of Laxdœla saga and Eyrbyggja saga) and a third work, which
Árni refers to as “ur Grettis Sögu”, perhaps mistakenly for Njáls saga, of
which a fragment now occupies § 3.7 Árni remarks that these three parts are
manifestly from the same codex, which is why he has reunited them, in
order that the original intention might be preserved. However, the frag-
ments of Njáls saga (§ 3) are written in single columns and almost certain-
ly came from another codex than the saga fragments in the first 38 folios.
Moreover, if the identification of Th. Th. suggested above is correct, it is
rather unlikely that Árni was right in thinking, when he later wrote the ca-
talogue entry, that the manuscript had been given him by “Mag. Jone
Wid(alin)”. Here Árni may simply have confused Þórður Þorláksson with
Jón Vídalín, who was his successor as bishop in Skálholt. In 1692, the year
in which Þorlákur Þórðarson brought manuscripts to Copenhagen, Jón
Vídalín was a young man of twenty-six in Bishop Þórður Þorláksson’s ser-
vice, not yet a magister; and regardless of whether the manuscript belonged
to the cathedral or had been left in Skálholt together with other books that
had belonged to Brynjólfur Sveinsson, Jón Vídalín would not have had the
right to dispose of it.
4 Man Isl V, p. xxviii.
5 Man Isl V, p. xxviii.
6 Kálund 1909, p. 23.
7 C/Kálund’s KatAM, vol. 1, p. 546: “Resten - hvoriblandt ogsá skulde være et stykke ‘ur Grettis
Sögu’ (hvis dette da ikke er en forveksling med Njála-fragmenteme) - mener A. M. at have er-
holdt ‘fra Bæ i Floa’, máske med undtagelse af nogle af Njála-bladene.” In his edition of Ámi’s
catalogue of his collection (AM 435 a-b, 4to), Kálund adds in parenthesis after the entry “ur
Grettis Sögu” simply “mangler nu”.