Gripla - 2023, Blaðsíða 199

THE GENESIS OF A COMPOSITE 197
ering, which is here presented as having contained seven leaves.55 Further
irregularities are quires 6 and 10, a binion and a tertion. Special attention
should be paid to the reconstructed quires 11 and 12: In the current colla-
tion (figure 1), these two gatherings are bound as one quaternion (quire
VII); however, based on the missing text, there seem to be six leaves miss-
ing between the bifolium fols. 38 and 45. At present, this lacuna is filled
out by fols. 39–44, however, this collation cannot be the original: Fol. 38
ends in chapter 16 of Jóns saga baptista with “bera lostasemi með”.56 The
text on fol. 39 begins with “loknir oc birti” and belongs to chapter 27. The
subsequent leaves build a textual continuum until the end of fol. 44, which
ends in chapter 33 with “at hinn heilagi”. Given that fol. 45 begins in chap-
ter 24 with “[sag]di marga okomna hluti”, it is safe to say that fols. 39–44
textually belong after fol. 45. After fol. 45, there is again a short lacuna, just
as after fol. 44. It is sensible to assume that the outer most bifolium of the
reconstructed gathering XII went missing. The paper gathering added in
the seventeenth century between fols. 85 and 96 is made up of five bifolia.
The text ends on line 17 on fol. 92r; the following three and a half leaves
are blank. Given that there are 38 lines per page in PU4 and that not a
full eight leaves were used to replace the text, it might appear sensible to
assume that the original gathering, which would have had a line count of
approximately 30–32 lines per page, consisted of four bifolia (quire 17 in
figure 2).

55 Irregular structures of the first (and last) gathering of a manuscript can be observed else-
where, see e.g., the collation of GKS 1005 fol. (quire I: one bifolium and a singleton as the
last leaf of the quire), or that of Holm Perg 34 4to (quire I: three bifolia and a singleton,
whereby the singleton (fol. 2) is bound between fols. 1 and 3). In other cases, the first
gathering is smaller than the following ones, e.g. in AM 61 fol. Here, the first gathering is
a tertion, while those that follow tend to be quaternions.
56 Chapter division according to Unger, ed., Postola Sögur.