Gripla - 2022, Page 189

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JON WRIGHT
“EX MARGINIBUS”
Law-Book Marginalia Copied Out by Gissur Einarsson1
Introduction
british library additional manuscript 11250 is made up
of diverse fragments from the collection of Finnur Magnússon bound
together when he sold them to the British Museum in 1837. The catalogue
description – “FRAGMENTA MEMBRANACEA plurima, varii argu-
menti, partim Latine, partim Islandice, secc. xiii-xv.” – fairly drastically
understates the range both of dates and of languages.2 The youngest is
certainly sixteenth-century, the oldest perhaps eleventh, and in addition
to Latin and Icelandic we find German and Law French. Of the forty-six
leaves and partial leaves, only seven are of definitely Scandinavian origin.
Along with the fragment under discussion below, there is a leaf identified
by Jón Þorkelsson as having come from AM 322 fol., an early fourteenth-
century Norwegian law text; a partial leaf containing part of Bishop Árni
Þorláksson’s Christian law; and a bifolium from the otherwise lost cor-
respondence book of the early fourteenth-century Archbishop of Niðarós,
Eilífr Árnason.3
1 This article and edition had its far-off origin in 2015 as a piece of MA coursework at
University College London, under the supervision of David d’Avray, for whose expert
and patient guidance I am immensely grateful. Elements of the introduction were also
delivered as a paper at COLSONOEL in London, 2016, and at the 17th International
Saga Conference in Reykjavík, 2018; my thanks also to the organisers of both confe-
rences for the opportunity to present my preliminary work, and to the many attendees
who offered useful suggestions. A great many other people at Stofnun Árna Magnússonar
and elsewhere were kind enough to offer their time and expertise; among others I wish to
thank Elizabeth Ashman Rowe, Margaret Cormack, Margrét Eggertsdóttir, Roberto Luigi
Pagani, Ryder Patzuk-Russell and Svanhildur Óskarsdóttir. Particular thanks for especially
invaluable guidance are due to Gottskálk Jensson, Guðvarður Már Gunnlaugsson, Már
Jónsson and †Nigel Palmer.
2 Accessed via searcharchives.bl.uk.
3 Jón Þorkelsson, “Islandske håndskrifter i England og Skotland,” Arkiv för nordisk filologi
8 (1891): 216–17; Jón Helgason, “Catalogue of the Icelandic Manuscripts in the British
Library” (unpublished draft, rev. Jonna Louis-Jensen, 2008), np.
Gripla XXXIII (2022): 187–234