Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series B - 01.06.1960, Side 13

XI
provide the text with which other worthwhile versions
can be compared in order to establisli the text from
which all the extant versions appear to be derived.
But, equally, within the handful of manuscripts useful
for this purpose there is no decisive reason for choosing
any other. 285 is a careful, sensible copy of the saga,
and when “corrected”, it serves as well as any as a
basis for reconstructing the common original.
The deviations of 285 from this original may be
discovered by consulting the variants printed below
the text (for a list of references see Bibl. Arnam.
XXIV). Theoretically all the primary sources ought
to be taken into consideration, but many of them by
their own evident aberrations reveal their untrust-
worthiness, so that attention may in practice be con-
fined to 285 and the five manuscripts used in the
variants of this edition. When these five agree on a
reading different from that of 285, it is fairly certain
that they have retained the reading of the common
original, and that 285 has introduced a variant of its
own. But the five manuscripts used in the variants
are not of equal weight: S13 is rather a poor text, and
11 also has some evident errors and a considerable
number of other readings probably not original. When
S13 has a reading of its own (as it frequently has) and
the four others agree against 285, it is probahle that
here again 285 is “wrong” and the four are “right”.
Furthermore, when S13 and 11 each have readings of
their own, the agreement of the remaining three
against 285 is also probably significant.
Using the primary manuscripts in this way it is
possible to make out the common original of all the
manuscripts with considerable certainty. But the text
thus arrived at is itself corrupt in many places. Notes
on a few of the corruptions are given in the Textual
Commentary.