Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series A - 01.10.2003, Side 148
126*
447 (AM 447 4to)
has only ‘oc’. The next fourteen words of both manuscripts are identical.
After that 447 has ‘medan þeir ræntu þar’ while M has ‘en’; this difference
is not recorded. It may be that ÞJ decided to call attention only to cases
where M has noticeably more to record than 447, cf the ‘oc’ and ‘en’ above,
which do not materially add anything. After ‘baru þadan’ (447 58.3) the
word ‘mat’, absent in 447 (and Z) but present in M (45.23), is inserted with
a caret. 447’s ‘4 (hestum)’ is replaced correctly by ‘7’.8 9 Then comes, with a
caret, ‘og foru burt med þat’ which represents M accurately, apart from the
alternative spelling of ‘burt’ for ‘bravt’; the following word ‘enn’, absent in
M, is not struck out. This seems a fairly typical example of ÞJ’s method,
though sometimes he leaves quite long strings of 447’s words unaltered
even when the manuscript of M is quite clear, for example at the beginning
of M’s chapter 42 (447 chapter 49.9 ff.); the passage is in M on f. 8v, one of
the clearest sides. For four lines of 447 no alterations are made; then come
five lines with corrections to four of them. At 50.2 ‘Snjofellz-’ is not emen-
ded to ‘Snæfells’ (acceptable spelling variation), but ‘Daguerdar ne8’ is
changed to ‘daugurdtf/- nes’. 447’s ‘þar var ejn kona sudureisk á er Þör-
gunna hiet’ (50.5-6) corresponds to M’s ‘kona ein uar aa skipinv svdr *eysk
(eysks MS)- su hef Þorgvnr’ (42.14-15); the only alteration made is that in
the woman’s name <ur) is added above <a) (which is not deleted). ÞJ prob-
ably felt that the sense of the two passages was sufficiently similar but that
the variant of the name was worth recording.
A consequence of these observations on ÞJ’s method is that one can use
his variants positively - that is, whatever he writes himself is a reasonably
accurate representation of M’s text - but it is seldom that one can use them
negatively with confidence. Where the text of 447 is left untouched one
cannot assume that M had the same reading, even when the script was easy
to read; there must, moreover, have been several now-lost leaves where the
hand was by no means clear, just as is the case with some of the preserved
leaves. Difficulty in making out the words of M is the probable reason for
the complete absence of alterations on 447’s ff. 9r and 9v. (This unaltered
stretch, corresponding to about 90 lines in IF IV, is too short to be accoun-
ted for through a complete missing leaf.)
ÞJ’s insertions hardly provide the complete duplication of M’s text that
one might at first have hoped for. Yet it would seem that on the whole ÞJ
was keen to insert M’s readings, incomplete though this practice seems
sometimes to have been. One would very much have liked to know for
certain whether M contained the words at Ránar (cf IF IV, p. 148. 1. 13), a
8 Here ÞJ uses a Hindu-Arabic numeral where M has Roman, though at other times he may use
Roman figures.