Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series A - 01.06.2001, Page 73

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tear are in bad condition. The worst is f. 69v, which is the back page of
a gathering and now largely illegible. There are problems on the first
page of the next gathering, f. 70r, and on f. 99r, which is the front of
the last leaf of the last gathering in the saga; the reverse side of this
leaf, f. 99v containing Arinbjarnarkviða, is almost as problematic as f.
69v. Ultraviolet photography has helped with the decipherment of
other passages in the manuscript, but unfortunately not with the four
pages mentioned here.
§2.1. The text on f. 69v. This page was evidently difficult to read as
long ago as the seventeenth century, as appears clearly in four copies
descended from M, particularly AM 455 4to. Finnur Jónsson would
seem, however, still to have been able to read f. 69v when he prepared
his edition of 1886-88 (here abbreviated FJ), probably thanks to his
practice of freshening up the writing with distilled water; this practice
has doubtless contributed to the deterioration of the text in the long
term (§ 2.1.1). The introduction provides a detailed discussion of the
ways in which the illegible M-text has been replaced not only in the
seventeenth-century copies but also in the Icelandic printed edition of
1782 and a related eighteenth-century manuscript in Trinity College,
Dublin. Part of this discussion is adapted from the editor’s earlier ex-
position in Gripla VIII, to which is now added the interesting finding
that the eighteenth-century texts have apparently been influenced by a
set of Egils rímur composed in 1643 (§ 2.1.2). The present edition has
had to resort to a (slightly modified) reproduction of the reading of f.
69v in FJ, though a few independent readings are printed in the intro-
duction and variants are supplied from both groups of textual witnes-
ses discussed in § 3. Unfortunately the first nine and a half lines of the
left-hand column could not be read by any earlier copyist and defeated
even Finnur Jónsson; this portion of the original M-text must conse-
quently be written off as irrecoverable (§ 2.1.3).
§ 2.2. The text onf. 70r. Most of this page has been read directly from
the codex. However, for the first eight lines of the right-hand column it
has again been necessary to have recourse to the reading in FJ.
§ 2.3. The text on f. 99r. It has been possible to decipher this page with
the help of FJ and of the oldest and some younger copies including AM
460 4to, which was written in Copenhagen by the scribe Eyjólfur
Björnsson and collated with M by Ámi Magnússon himself.