Gripla - 2022, Page 377

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Having got to grips with the standard form of the rímur, it is also worth
assessing its dissemination in the extant witnesses and considering which
witnesses deviate from this pattern. This can help us to reconstruct the
earliest history of Grobbians rímur and contribute to our understanding
of to what extent the different versions might relate to the form which
was first composed in response to its continental forerunner. Finnur
Sigmundsson mentions thirty-two witnesses containing all or part of the
multi-authored work which he calls “Grobiansrímur.”44 By consulting
the catalogues of Landsbókasafn Íslands, Uppsala University Library,
the Royal Library in Stockholm, the Royal Library in Copenhagen and
the British Library, I am able to add four new witnesses to that list.45 Of
the resulting thirty-six witnesses, twenty-four contain the core Grobbians
rímur in whole or part.46 This also means that twelve of the witnesses, be-
sides other non-related contents, only contain the continuations, be it one
or several. This leaves us with twenty-four witnesses of particular inter-
est to the present study. It is worth noting that of these twenty-four, just
under half (among which are two of the three oldest witnesses) contain,
besides other non-related contents, only some form of the core rímur, and
the other half contain some form of the core rímur in combination with
some or all of the continuations. The former group, eleven manuscripts in
total, provide further justification for looking at the core rímur in isolation,
since for a number of early modern audiences that is how they would have
been experienced.
While a full study of the filiation of all twenty-four of the witnesses
containing the core Grobbians rímur would, naturally, be desirable, in the
present context, I restrict myself to a consideration of only the oldest wit-
nesses, that is to say those probably written in the seventeenth century
and thus produced during or shortly after Jón Magnússon í Laufási’s and
44 Finnur Sigmundsson, Rímnatal, I:178.
45 Those witnesses are Lbs 3906 8vo, Lbs 4068 8vo, Papp. 8vo nr 8 (containing only ‘Viðbjóðs
ríma,ʼ the continuation by Vigfús Jónsson) and NKS 1131 fol. (a copy of AM 149 8vo, as
stated on f. 1r). There seem to be no witnesses containing this work at Uppsala University
Library or the British Library. Further witnesses may be present in collections in the UK,
Ireland, Norway, Canada and the United States.
46 Two defective manuscripts which contain a fragmentary version of the core Grobbians rímur
are JS 262 8vo (containing all of the second and third fitts but lacking the start of the first
and the end of the fourth fitt) and ÍB 634 8vo (containing the end of the third fitt and all of
the fourth fitt).
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