Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series B - 01.10.1960, Blaðsíða 27

XXV
251. Fo. 22 ends at line 7 of the recto side with
sueýpar yfer hana 751 ~2, the rest of the page originally
left blank, but with the first sentence of fo. 23r added
in a later hand. The supplied central episode is in
the same hand as the B-type text, but its ink is of
a different colour and it may have been copied at a
later date.
In AM. 585c, 4° the transitions from the B-type
text to that of the central episode and back are more
smoothly managed. There are no abrupt breaks, and
indeed if the early manuscripts of Gibbons saga were
unknown there would be no reason to suggest that
the AM. 585c, 4° version was a composite one. How-
ever, whereas the beginning and end of this text
clearly derive from B, a manuscript origin for tlie
supplied central episode cannot be traced. The events
in it are described in the same order as in other early
versions of the saga, and they often have similar
details, but the wording is completely different. Indeed
it is so different that we are led to doubt that this
central episode is taken from a written text of Gibbons
saga. The scribe could be filling in the gap in the
original from his memory of oral versions of the tale.
A more likely suggestion is that of Professor Jón
Helgason who argues that the scribe was here turning
into prose a version of the story known from the
rímur about Gibbon. He writes:
“In AM. 616b, 4° are preserved rímur of Gibbon
(who here is called Gibbiun) with the heading: Hier
biriast Gibbiuns Rýmur ortar aff Ejolfe Jonssyne 1663.
It is clear from another date in the manuscript that
1663 is the year when the manuscript was written,
not when the rímur were composed3. The rímur must
3 Cf. Kálund, Katalog II, p. 29. Kálund is wrong when he
believes that the letters “I.R.” are the scribe’s initials; these
letters are to be read “fyrsta ríma” and correspond to “IIR”
before the second ríma, etc.