Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series B - 01.06.1960, Blaðsíða 19
XVII
manuscript as in other letters such as á, ö and ý, but
exactly matching type is not available.
The letters á and sá (ni without accents is very rare
in Brynjólfur Jónsson’s handwriting) have been dis-
tinguished in the transcript, since their forms are
clear in the manuscript, though they do not differ in
function, e.g. þd 312, þsá 222. On the other hand there
seems to be no gain in transcribing as j the often
rather long final i of the manuscript (except in the
case of numerals).
The letter p (here transcribed o) is used so consis-
tently that it appears justifiable to emend the few
instances of o written for it in error, e.g. 304. The
opposite mistake, p written for o, also occurs a couple
of times, 11220 and 11324. In 917 Volua has been
emended to Vplua in view of the spelling used in ll24,
but it is not certain how the word was pronounced
in the seventeenth century.
A single dot over a vowel occurs a few times in the
manuscript. This has been regarded as an accidental
mark of the pen when it occurs in a word where an
accent is unexpected, and as a mistake for two dots
in other words.
It is often difficult to decide whether a slight space
between the elements of a compound word is deliberate
or accidental; in cases of uncertainty the compound
has been transcribed as two elements if the first is in
the genitive case, but as one word if it is not. The
same rule has been applied where a word is divided
between two lines. Where two separate words have
definitely been joined together in the writing, they
have been transcribed as one, e.g. vtá 267.
Apart from the correction of spelling mistakes and
grammatical slips, emendation of the text has been
confined to a few places in which the text offered by
the manuscript hardly makes good sense. Letters sup-