Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series A - 01.06.2001, Page 74

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§ 2.4. The text on f. 99v (Arinbjarnarkviöa). The page following the
end of the saga was originally a blank outer cover, and the text of the
poem Arinbjarnarkviða added there is in a hand contemporary with,
but quite distinct from, the hands involved in the writing of the saga
proper. The poem cannot therefore be said to belong to the A-redaction
in the strict sense. In any case its text, as already mentioned, is now
largely illegible in M and older transcripts have to be consulted. The
earliest of these was apparently made by Árni Magnússon or one of his
assistants; it survives in a secondary copy in AM 146 4to, where it is
inserted into a text of the saga written by the well-known scribe Ásgeir
Jónsson. 146 was undoubtedly copied in Norway for the historian Tor-
fæus (§ 2.4.1). A few strophes of the poem are also found in the second
part of Árni Magnússon’s personal anthology of skaldic poetry, AM
761 b 4to, but these are not relevant to the reconstruction of the ille-
gible text in M (§ 2.4.2). Finally, the text of the poem appearing in the
large saga anthology AM Accessoria 28, written by the clergyman Jón
Egilsson (t 1784), schoolmaster at Hólar and later parish priest at
Laufás, resembles that in 146 but has two additional half-strophes
more or less corresponding to the last eight lines that Finnur Jónsson
was able to decipher in M (§ 2.4.3). The text of Arinbjarnarkviða in
the present edition (Appendix I) is based on the diplomatic transcript
in FJ with a few previously unpublished corrections by Jón Helgason;
variants are given from 146 and from a transcript made by Guðbrandur
Vigfússon ca. 1860 (§ 2.4.4).
§ 2.5. Concluding remarks on Finnur Jónssons edition of 1886-88.
The text of M in the edition published by Finnur Jónsson for Samfund
til udgivelse af gammel nordisk litteratur is on the whole fairly reli-
able, but between them Jón Helgason and Bjarni Einarsson have been
able to correct approximately 60 misreadings. The text of the strophes
in FJ is, however, eclectic and the variant apparatus is incomplete and
at times misleading. On the other hand, Finnur Jónsson transcribed
passages in the codex that can no longer be read and might otherwise
have been irrevocably lost.
§ 3. Transmission ofthe textfrom the two lost leaves in M. A total of 12
textual witnesses are known that may have critical value for the recon-
struction of the two missing leaves in M. These witnesses can be sub-
divided into two groups.