Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series B - 01.06.1983, Page 182
SUMMARY
This is the first volume of a projected edition of the sagas
about Guðmundr Arason (born 1161), who was bishop of
Hólar from 1203 to his death in 1237 and who, although never
canonised, was considered by the Icelanders to be a saint. The
edition will consist of four volumes. The present volume
contains three texts: a short survey of Guðmundr’s life (ÆG),
Guðmundar saga A (GA; the so-called ‘oldest saga’), and an
abstract of this latter work. The three subsequent volumes will
contain Guðmundar saga B (GB; the so-called ‘middle saga’),
Guðmundar saga C (GC), which has never been published, and
Guðmundar saga D (GD), composed by brother Arngrímr.
1.1. Ævi Guðmundar biskups (ÆG) survives in only one MS,
AM 555 c 4to, which was written about 1656 by Halldór
Guðmundsson, a farmer in Eyjafjörður in the north of Iceland,
who also wrote a number of other MSS.
1.2. Ami Magnússon described ÆG in 555 c as an abstract
of Bishop Guðmundr’s saga and he stated that the same text
was to be found in a Codex Resenianus. This MS can be
identified as Membr. Res. 6, which was presumably acquired
by Peder Resen some time between 1685 and 1688 and
presented by him to the University Library in Copenhagen,
where it was destroyed in the fire of 1728. According to the
printed catalogue of the Resen collection, the contents of
Membr. Res. 6 included a “Breviarium Vitæ Gudmundi Epis-
copi Holensis in Islandia”.
1.3. On the basis of surviving transcripts of various other
sections of Membr. Res. 6 (a set of annals, lists of kings, a list
of popes, a list of emperors and an obituarium) together with
the information provided by Árni Magnússon, it can be con-
cluded that most of the contents of the MS were written about
1250-83 and that there were some later additions. There are
certain indications that the MS was written by, or for, Sturla
Þórðarson (d. 1284).
1.4. ÆG is a kind of curriculum vitae recording Bishop
Guðmundr’s whereabouts every winter from the cradle to the