Gripla - 2023, Blaðsíða 196

194 GRIPLA
the two units according to the ONP Dictionary of Old Norse Prose, which
is based on Kristian Kålund and Stefán Karlsson,44 does not shed light on
the matter: Stefán Karlsson’s narrow dating of fols. 1–35 to the decade
1360–1370 is by no means an absolute one,45 and since PU2 and PU3 are
dated to the time between 1350 and 1400, all three production units might
very well be contemporaries. Thus, in its present state, both PU1 and PU2
are to be treated as production units MC – individual in both their mate-
rial and content. The relationship between PU2 and PU3 is much easier to
define because the break between them is preserved: PU3 was obviously
added to the already existing PU2, making use of the empty space on fols.
52v and 53rv and adding new writing support to accommodate the texts.
Therefore, PU3 qualifies as a production unit C-MC – adding to the
available writing support left blank in the previous unit and adding more
material. PU4, as a much later addition, stands separately from the other
units as a production unit MC.
One can only speculate about H3’s motives for adding more material
to the already existing texts. Kathryn M. Rudy discusses possible reasons
for users to add to a manuscript in great detail. Examples given are, among
others, personalization and newly available texts as possible “forces” that
“drove book owners to add texts and images to books that anyone would
have considered complete.” 46 The fourth major production unit of AM
239 fol. might be included as an example at this point; it was certainly
never planned by the fourteenth-century scribes but deemed a necessary
completion to accommodate the user’s needs some 300 years later. Surely
the fourteenth-century scribes had certain motives to add material and
gather it in one collection, but apart from the similarity of the texts, these
motives remain unknown today.
The table of contents on fol. 1r indicates that the three oldest produc-
tion units had come together by the beginning of the fifteenth century,
which is why it is worth examining the binding of AM 239 fol. When tak-
ing a close look at the binding stations of the manuscript, three different
44 For the ONP dating, see https://onp.ku.dk/onp/onp.php?m175. Kristian Kålund dates
AM 239 fol. in its entirety to the time between 1350 and 1400, cf. Kålund, Katalog over Den
Arnamagnæanske Håndskriftsamling, 1:206.
45 Stefán Karlsson, Sagas of Icelandic Bishops, 21.
46 Kathryn M. Rudy, Piety in Pieces: How Medieval Readers Customized Their Manuscripts
(Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2016), 9.