Manuscripts of fourteenth-century date containing <i>fornaldarsögur</i>

Margaret Clunies Ross

Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages

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Vol. VIII. Poetry in the fornaldarsǫgur 7. Introduction 4. Manuscripts 4.1. Manuscripts of fourteenth-century date containing fornaldarsögur

4.1. Manuscripts of fourteenth-century date containing fornaldarsögur

Margaret Clunies Ross 2017, ‘Manuscripts of fourteenth-century date containing fornaldarsögur’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry in fornaldarsögur. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 8. Turnhout: Brepols [check printed volume for citation].

The earliest extant manuscript to contain any fornaldarsögur is AM 544 4°, known as Hauksbók (Hb) because it was written for and in part by the Icelandic lawman Haukr Erlendsson (d. 1334). This compilation, which includes many religious and historical texts as well as various sagas, has been described as ‘an entire private library, which Haukr, with assistance, wrote for himself’ (Stefán Karlsson 1993, 271). All three of the items of interest to the present edition, Bret (in unique combination with Merl I-II), Heiðr and RagnSon, occur within the section of the compilation that Haukr is thought to have written himself between 1302-10 (Stefán Karlsson 1964b). This manuscript provides the only texts of RagnSon and Merl I-II, and a distinctive, often abbreviated, text of Heiðr. A facsimile of Hb is Hb 1960, and an edition of the whole manuscript is Hb 1892-6; see further the Introductions to SkP I, clxvi, II, lxii-lxiii. Separate discussions of the manuscript witnesses to the three above items can be found in their respective Introductions in this volume.

After Hauksbók, the second oldest compilation containing fornaldarsögur is Holm perg 7 4° (7) of c. 1300-25, originally part of a single codex with AM 580 4° (580), of roughly similar date. Both manuscripts are of Icelandic provenance, though their exact origins are unknown. Ms. 580 contains texts of three riddarasögur, Elíss saga ok Rósamundar ‘The Saga of Elís and Rósamunda’ (Elís), Bærings saga ‘The Saga of Bæringr’ (Bær) and Flóvents saga ‘The Saga of Flóvent’ (Flóv), followed by a fragment of Mág and the rubric for HG, while 7 contains texts of Konráðs saga keisarasonar ‘The Saga of Konráðr, the Emperor’s son’ (Konr) and HG, followed by Jómsvíkinga saga ‘The Saga of the Jómsvíkingar’ (Jvs), Ásm, Ǫrv and the first few chapters of Egils saga Skallagrímssonar ‘The Saga of Egill Skallagrímsson’ (Eg). Because of its relatively early date, this manuscript is of considerable importance for the textual history of Ǫrv, as it differs in many respects from the later manuscripts of this saga, a matter discussed in detail in the edition in this volume. It is also the only early manuscript to contain the poetry of Ásm, as the other pre-1500 text (AM 586 4°) contains no stanzas.

Another relatively early manuscript containing a text of Ǫrv is AM 344 a 4° (344a), dated between 1350-1400. Interestingly, this Icelandic manuscript was previously bound together with a text of Alexanders saga ‘The Saga of Alexander’ (Alex), perhaps because both works include tales of exotic travel and conquest. Árni Magnússon acquired the codex containing both manuscripts in Norway in 1689 and separated them, and the part containing Alex, dated to c. 1280, was later given the siglum AM 519 a 4° (for the facsimile of this manuscript, see Jón Helgason 1966c; de Leeuw van Weenen 2009). The 344a text of Ǫrv, whose scribe and provenance are unknown, provides a version of the saga that differs considerably both in its prose and verse components from that of ms. 7, and is thus likely to derive from an exemplar different from that of 7.

The great historical compilation Flateyjarbók ‘Book of Flatey’ (GKS 1005 fol, Flat) contains two of the texts edited here, OStór and Sǫrla þáttr ‘The Tale of Sǫrli’ (Sǫrla), both as additions to the so-called Greatest Saga of the Norwegian king Óláfr Tryggvason (ÓT). The sole text of Sǫrla is in this manuscript, together with the earliest text of OStór. The section of the compilation in which these two þættir occur is usually dated c. 1382-7. For a fuller description of this codex, see the Introductions to SkP I, clxi-clxii, II, lx. There is a facsimile of the manuscript (Flat 1930) and an edition of the whole text (Flat 1860-8, I-III). Manuscripts of OStór and Sǫrla are discussed further in the Introductions to those texts below.

From roughly the same period, of the late fourteenth or the very early fifteenth century, comes the Icelandic manuscript NKS 1824 b 4° (1824b), which contains the sole medieval witness to Vǫls on fols 1r-51r (the ultimate source of all later paper manuscripts of this saga) and the only complete text of the Y version of Ragn (fols 51r-79r), followed by stanzas 1-22/5 of Krm (minus st. 16) as a separate appendix. This valuable manuscript is dated to c. 1400-25 or more recently (so Stories for All Time) to 1380-1420. The arrangement of the two sagas in this manuscript in a sequence followed by Krm is unique in the corpus and probably indicates that whoever had these texts copied in this way was fully aware of the supposed connection between the legendary Vǫlsungar and the family of Ragnarr loðbrók through his second wife Áslaug, who appears in both sagas (see the discussion of this idea in the Introductions to Ragn and Krm and in Section 7.1 below). The two sagas were edited together by Magnus Olsen (Olsen 1906-8). Ms.1824b was sent to King Fredrik III of Denmark in the mid-seventeenth century by Bishop Brynjólfur Sveinsson of Skálholt.

Further texts of fornaldarsögur are found in manuscripts from the very late fourteenth century or the turn of the fifteenth. These include a fragment of GHr in AM 567 XI a 4° from c. 1350-1400, a text of StSt from AM 335 4° of c. 1400 (from 1390-1410 according to Stories for All Time) and a text of ÞJ in a manuscript compilation of riddarasögur in Holm perg 6 4° from c. 1375-1425.

References

4.2. Fifteenth-century manuscripts containing fornaldarsögur

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4.1. Manuscripts of fourteenth-century date containing fornaldarsögur

References

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