Gripla - 2022, Síða 198

GRIPLA196
it is not clear why this was done, given that the information must have
been obsolete at the time of copying and there is no accompanying com-
mentary drawing attention to this fact.
Sachsenspiegel
Items 119 (in Icelandic) and 131 (in Middle Low German) are both
attributed to Sachsenspiegel (“Sassenspeigill seiger suo þad er logbok j
þyduerska landi”, 119), which on the face of it would seem to be strong
evidence for that text circulating in some form in Iceland. However,
neither provision appears to have a parallel in the text of Sachsenspiegel as
preserved in German manuscripts.22 As an example, item 131 deals with
the making of false seals (“Se dar valske jnngesegel maken...”); “ingesegel/
ingesigel” occurs three times in Sachsenspiegel, at least in Eckhardt’s edition
(Landsrecht III 34 § 1, pp. 215–16 and III 64 § 1, p. 249 and Lehnrecht 72
§ 1, pp. 109–10), none of which provisions is remotely close in either wor-
ding or meaning to item 131 in Gissur’s fragment. Whether the passages
come from a lost variant of Sachsenspiegel or from another German law-
book which the scribe of Gissur’s exemplar misidentified, or whether the
attribution is entirely spurious, has unfortunately not been possible to
ascertain. One further item, 132, is in a mix of Middle Low German and
Icelandic; it seems also to be legal in nature though it is not attributed to
any particular law code and has not been identified.
Borgarþingslǫg
Item 146 claims to be from the Borgarþingslǫg. Most of the Borgar­
þingslǫg, with the exception of the Kristinréttr, has been lost, and the
text here is not among what little survives.23 I have not been able to find
it in any other text or manuscript, with the exception of British Library
Add. MS 11242, which for reasons outlined above cannot be considered
22 cf. Sachsenspiegel. Landrecht, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Fontes Iuris Germanici
Antiqui, Nova Series I.1, ed. by Karl August Eckhardt, 2nd edition (Göttingen:
Musterschmidt, 1955), passim, and Sachsenspiegel. Lehnrecht, Monumenta Germaniae
Historica, Fontes Iuris Germanici Antiqui, Nova Series I.1, ed. by Karl August Eckhardt,
2nd edition (Göttingen: Musterschmidt, 1956), passim.
23 De eldste østlandske kristenrettene, ed. by Eyvind Fjeld Halvorsen and Magnus Rindal (Oslo:
Riksarkivet, 2008), ix: 226–231.