Gripla - 2023, Page 221

“EYRSILFR DRUKKIT, ÞAT GERIR BANA” 219
on diseases and cures (including a long chapter on the eyes), a chapter on
hydrotherapy, another on compound drugs (antidotarium), a fragmentary
lapidary, and a cookbook. It was edited and published in 1931 by Henning
Larsen with an introduction in English, an index, and an English transla-
tion.47
Discussion
A handful of stemmas have been constructed to describe the relationship
among the six manuscripts and/or their relationship to other sources, such
as the herbal pharmacology of Harpestræng.48 The results are conjectural,
considering that although all the six manuscripts are clearly related through
common foreign sources, this kinship manifests to a varying degree in dif-
ferent sections in each work, and each individual manuscript has additional
material which cannot be found in the others. In addition, the manuscripts
are each preserved in a more or less fragmentary state.
To further illustrate this issue, the appendix below contains an overview
of my results of the comparison of each of 655’s fifty-two articles to the
texts of the other five medical books. The comparison highlighted that the
closest relatives of the thirteenth-century 655 are the late fifteenth-century
AM 434 and D. However, 655’s relationship to each of the two is very dif-
ferent. Forty-four of 655’s fifty-two articles (85%) are also found in D, often
nearly verbatim – but they are scattered throughout the manuscript. In
contrast, forty-seven (90%) of 655’s articles also exist in 434, but in this case
at the same place, almost in the same order, and often verbatim. AM 194
8vo contains nine of 655’s articles (17%) in different places, and the wording
is not as similar as in the other two manuscripts. AM 673 a II 4to contains
one article also found in 655, about how to quench a man’s thirst (no. 13 in
655), with very similar wording,49 but none can be found in AM 696 4to.
47 Henning Larsen, ed., An Old Icelandic Medical Miscellany. MS Royal Irish Academy 23 D 43
with Supplement from MS Trinity College (Dublin) L-2-27 (Oslo: Jacob Dybwad, 1931). See
Larsen’s linguistic and non-linguistic arguments for the dating on 15–23.
48 See Kristensen, Harpestræng, xxix, xxxv; Larsen, Medical Miscellany, 29; Jón Steffensen,
“Alþýðulækningar,” 134; see also stemmas in Fabian Schwabe, “Den norrøne legemiddel-
boktradisjonen,” in Translation – Adaptation, Interpretation, Transformation. Proceedings
from the 28th Study Conference of IASS, Lund (2010), 6, 10.
49 Hægstad, Eit stykke, 4, line 15.