BIV. The manuscripts and their presentation

1. Text coverage and damage

Both main manuscripts have suffered considerable attrition and loss; the fragment in the Norwegian State Archives, NRA 62e (c 1300-1325) is touched on in Stefán Karlsson 2000 221.

Ms. A: AM 180 c fol (c 1400):

fols. 19ra – 47rb, suffers principally 2 lacunae:

first lacuna: 6 missing original folios between the present folios  23 and 24, which is one of the folios that has lost the top 4 lines; this is immediately followed by

second lacuna: 3 missing original folios between the present folios  24 and 25 (also cropped at the top);

thereafter the text is complete.

Ms. a: AM 180 a fol (c 1450-1500):

fols. 7v – 34v, suffers principally 3 lacunae:

first lacuna: 2 missing original folios between the present folios 13 and 14  (this corresponds to the French laisse or segment R244, and despite recommencement at R252, there is, because of derangement (see §B.II), interstitial text (for the numbering conventions, see §A.II).

fol. 18 is cropped at the bottom,  entailing a loss of approx. 20 lines

fol. 23 is severely mutilated, most of it cut away, leaving only 16, approx. half lines, in the upper inner corner

second lacuna: one missing original folio between the present folios 33 and 34

third lacuna: at fol. 34, corresponding to two leaves of text, terminates the Agþ text in ms. a.

2. Text presentation

a) Normalisation of text

Each text, although electronically derived from Unger's 1860 edition, has been checked against the original manuscript and rendered in the normalisation adopted by Ordbog over det norrøne prosasprog (ONP) and Menota (Medieval Nordic Text Archive). Proper names are therefore rendered with capital letters, designations of nationality ('frakkar, afrikamenn') with lower case, but see also below, §c) Normalisation of names. A liberal policy is adopted towards permitting characteristic orthographic eccentricities of each witness to manifest themselves.  Syntactically, for example, there are frequent confusions as to singular or plural forms of verbs (most pronounced in the a-text). Constructions such as 'ins vildasta liðs, er honum fylgðu' (where 'fylgði' is to expected) are frequent and are not consistently 'normalised'.

b) Punctuation of text

Punctuation has been normalised; the convention is new and intended to aid comprehension, and will be presented and explained when a suitable opportunity presents itself.

c) Normalisation of names

Some high-frequency names are normalised, others retain their manuscript form, except that the frequent doubling of consonants in names is not upheld.

Practice quite often varies between the two main mss, as can be seen here:

'Agulandus' retains a Latin declension in both A and a, and is therefore declined thus in expansions of abbreviated forms (prep. 'til' + gen., despite occasional occurrences of 'til Agulandum' (i.e. acc.) written in full)

'Bos' (A); 'Boz' (a)

'Clares' (A); 'Klares' (a)

'Girard' (a) (dat: ‑d; gen. ‑ds); 'Girarðr' (A) (dat: ‑ð; gen. ‑ðs); there is a tendency to write 'Geir-' at the start of the text, but this is largely replaced by 'Gir-' as the þáttr progresses; this latter form, which resembles the French, is adopted, and on account of a number of occcurences of the form 'Girarðr', this entirely assimilated ON form is adopted for the nominative

'Jamund' (A and a ) (dat: ‑mund; gen. ‑munds)

'Madekvin' (A); 'Mandekvin' (a)

'Maumet' (A) (A gen.: ‑ts: a: gen ‑z)

'Oddgeir' (A and a) (dat: ‑geiri; gen. ‑geirs)

'Rollant' (A and a) (dat: ‑t; gen. ‑ts)

'Vitaklin' (A and a); there is, however, more of a tendency to use ‑c- than ‑k- in A, and this is usually respected.

References