Gripla - 2023, Blaðsíða 189

THE GENESIS OF A COMPOSITE 187
fol. 109. Gatherings are mostly made of 4 bifolia (IX54-61, X62-69, XI70-77,
XII78-85, XIV96-103); only the last gathering is a tertion (XV104-109). Again,
most of the quires adhere to Gregory’s rule, only gathering X does not fol-
low the method faithfully. The average leaf size is 288x204 mm.
The layout continues to be arranged in one column, but the text block
measures 225x150 mm on average and is accordingly approximately 20 mm
taller than the text blocks in PU1 and PU2. The line count is, at least at
first, more regular than in PU2: fol. 52v is written in 31 lines, as is fol. 53v.
Fol. 53r counts 30 lines, and from fol. 54r until 85v, H3 writes 32 lines per
page. After a lacuna (supplemented by the paper addition), the line count
decreases to 29 lines on fols. 96r–97v. It increases only slightly at first,
with 31 lines on fols. 98r–103v and 33 lines on fol. 104r. Fols. 104v–109v,
however, suddenly show 40 lines per page. The end of the last text in PU3,
Viðræður Gregoríusar, is defective, but it might be that the scribe only had a
limited amount of writing support left at his disposal to conclude the text
and therefore started to increase the line count per page drastically.
As previously mentioned, fols. 52 and 53 were pricked together with
the rest of gathering VIII and show the same round pricking holes as the
other leaves in this gathering. The newly added writing material in PU3,
from gathering IX onward, shows slit-like pricking marks, meaning that
the pricking tool was changed from a round to a flat tool between this
production unit and the previous one. The line pricking shows a lot of in-
cidences where too many lines were pricked (e.g., fols. 70–77), and the last
two quires (fols. 96–106) show three sets of line pricking marks, whereby
the outermost pricking seems to have ultimately been used by the scribe
(see image 8).35 The ruling in PU3 seems to be lead ruling (see e.g. marks
on fols. 62r and 78r); however, there are also marks that appear more in the
style of dry-point ruling (e.g., fol. 72r).
35 Why these gatherings were re-pricked not once but twice remains unknown. The line
count indicated by the pricking marks does not vary from one set to the other.