Arinbjarnarkviða – uppskrift frá Árna Magnússyni

Abstract

The only medieval source of the tenth-century poem Arinbjarnarkviða is a page in the fourteenth-century manuscript Möðruvallabók. This page can no longer be read without technical aid and then only partially. Most of it was transcribed in the late seventeenth century, however. Until recently, it has been assumed that a transcript in AM 146 fol., written in Norway around 1690−97, is the oldest transcript of the poem. Another, slightly longer transcript does exist however in ÍB 169 4to. The author has recently argued that this is the oldest transcript. In 2010, Michael Chesnutt, as an explanation for the missing text in AM 146, proposed that a shorter version of the poem had been prepared and sent to Norway by Árni Magnússon, who doubted the authenticity of the longer version of the poem. In this article, it is argued that the remains of a third seventeenth-century transcript of Arinbjarnarkviða in AM 554 f 4to support Chesnutt’s explanation. This transcript can be dated to 1687−88.