Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series B - 01.06.1983, Page 192
CLXXXVI
Inngangur
different position at the time of its compilation. Some lines on
the wretched and sorrowful state of Christianity after Guð-
mundr had been driven from his bishopric in 1209, which are
shared by GA and Sturl, have been considered to be a clerical
insertion in Sturla’s Is-text. The formulation may well, however,
have been found in Is from the very beginning, since Sturla was
a good Christian and well disposed to Bishop Guðmundr.
8.5. In GA chapters 175-220 use is made of three sources:
ís, annals and Aróns saga (Ar). An independent Ar only
survives in a very poor condition. This is partly because there
are a number of lacunae, all of which fall within the section of
the saga that is used in GA, and in part because the surviving
text is very corrupt at many places. There are only very
inadequate editions of Ár, in SturlGV II and SturlJMK II, since
the parts of the saga which survive both independently and in
GA are for the most part reproduced on the basis of GA’s text
and in many cases the two texts have been mixed together in
the editions. GA’s Ár-text is admittedly superior on the whole
to the corresponding text in the independent Ár but it, too, is
nevertheless corrupt in places. Where GA’s Ár-text is more
detailed than the corresponding text in the independent Ár
without the longer text in GA’s being able to be explained as
being dependent on Is, GA has probably preserved the original
Ár-text. This is the case inter alia with GA chapters 194.5-10
and 206.10-20, which have not been included in the existing
Ár-editions. Since the section of Ár which is used in GA mostly
deals with events which are also narrated in Is, GA often
changes from one source to the other and in some cases Ár-
readings can be identified in GA’s Is-text and Is-readings in the
Ár-text. It is therefore necessary to reckon with the possibility
that the Ár-text in GA which is not parallelled in the surviving
parts of the independent Ár has been contaminated with the Is-
text. One scaldic verse, GA chapter 223.6-13, is found in both
Is and Ár and the same may have been the case with another
one, GA chapter 205.6-13. Fourteen verses in GA undoubtedly
derive from Ár, three of them from sections that only survive in
GA. Of the eleven remaining verses, one is not recorded in the
independent Ár and several of the others appear at different
points in the narrative and are presented in a different way
there from in GA. This is particularly the case with verses by
the priest Þormóðr Óláfsson, who is referred to in an annal for
1338, and it must be considered unlikely that these verses
belonged to the original Ár; they are more likely to have been
added as marginalia and some of them inserted at different
places in the two Ár-redactions.