Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series B - 01.06.1962, Side 28

XXVI
*A was in its turn copied two or three times in Iceland,
certainly twice by Jón Erlendsson (| 1672) in Gks 1006
fol. and AM 65 fol. and possibly once by an unknown
late 17th-century scribe in AM 326d 4to. *A and the
copies made from it eventually came to Denmark and *A
was probably copied once more, this time by Ásgeir
Jónsson in AM 326a 4to. As 326a must have been written
for Á.M., this was no doubt done in the winter of 1697-98,
when Ásgeir was in Copenhagen (cf. Manuscr. Isl. V
xxvii).
*B was also copied at least twice in Iceland. One of
the surviving copies is AM 329 4to, which we know to
have been completed before 1652, when it was in the
possession of Þorlákur Skúlason, and probably about
1639 (cf. the date at the end of Hrafnkels saga in AM
496 4to that probably originally formed part of the
same MS as 329, cf. above p. xxii). The other copy is AM
326c 4to, which was completed no later than 1675, when
Þorsteinn Björnsson died (cf. above p. xxiii).
All the other paper MSS that are related to Hr, with
the exception of AM 326b 4to ff. 14VM9V1, which can
be shown to be copied directly from Hr (cf. below p.
xl), can be seen to be derived from one or more of the
MSS copied from *A and *B. It seems certain, therefore,
that the ultimate source of all these MSS was *P, the
lost copy of Hr.
The chief objection that can be raised to this suggestion
is the greater significance of the variants from the Hr text
in the passage 3H-329. The most satisfactory explanation
for this would seem to be that the scribe of the lost MS
copied Hr as far as 311. When he reached this point he
discovered that the following chapter was incomplete. He
then abandoned Hr and used a lost MS of HÞ which,
however, was fragmentary and broke off 3438. Then he
returned to Hr for the section 3512—386.
In the sections H-3031 and 3512-386 there are a fair