Detaljer om håndskriftet

Parchment.

The manuscript is paginated 1-159 in the upper outer corners. On 28. maj 2001 the manuscript was foliated with a pencil by Mette Jakobsen and Kirsten Wolf.

Written in long lines with 16 to 18, occasionally 14, 15, and 19, lines to the page. Red rubrics and red or black initials (blue initials are found on fols 6r and 29r) appear in the manuscript. Some of the initials in red or black are quite ornate. The last red initial is found on fol. 51r. In some places, an open space has been left empty for the initials.

There are two lacunae: The first, a gathering of ten leaves, is between fols 18 and 19 (in Katrínar saga); the second, consisting of four leaves, is found after fol. 84 at the conclusion of Saga af Fides, Spes og Karitas. Considering the fact that fol. 84v is quite worn, the four leaves would seem to have been lost at an early date.

Hand I is responsible for fols 2r-13r, 15r-39v:12, 40r:6-44v:5 and 44v:9-84v (Wolf: A female legendary s. 22 ). The hand changes somewhat in the course of the manuscript. Among other things, the scribe begins on fol. 61r to make use of small capital ɴ to denote the geminate and starts on fol. 61v to regularly furnish j with a cross-bar, while the occasional use of small capital  with a superior dot is abandoned after fol. 59r. The differences suggest that the manuscript was written over an extended period of time, during which the scribe's habits changed, but the possibility that more scribes were involved cannot be excluded.

Hand II appears only twice and has written only a few lines, that is, fols 39v:12-40r:5 and 44v:6-8. It distinguishes itself from the first hand by its use of æ and .

Hand III, which is found on fol. 13v (A Latin prayer to St Catherine of Alexandria) is altogether different from hands I and II. Its main characteristics as opposed to hands I and II are its single-storey a and trianguar-shaped descender of g.

Hand IV is quite similar to hand I, except that its long s (ſ) does not descend below the line.

• Full-page miniatures in colour (red and blue); all the illuminations are framed.
• Fol. 1v: St. Margaret with a book in her right hand, in her left holding a cross-staff on which a dove is perched.
• Fol. 14v: St. Catherine with a sword and the traditional wheel.
• Fol. 28v: St. Cecilia with a book and a sword, whose point pierces the eye of a crouching wretch in human form upon which she is stepping.
• Fol. 48v: St. Dorothy with a book and a basket of flowers.
• Fol. 60v: St Agnes, drawn in black ink. She is represented with a spear in her left hand and a book in her right. (Evidently, the illuminator confused St Agatha with St Agnes, whose characteristic iconographic emblem is a lamb; St Agatha's emblem is usually a dish with her breasts)

• Smaller coloured illustrations (black and red) illustrating Margrétar saga:
• Fol. 7r: St. Margaret emerging from the dragon's belly, holding a cross-staff in her left hand.
• Fol. 8r: St. Margaret with her foot on the devil's throat, left hand seizing him by the hair, the cross-staff in her right hand stabbing his belly.
• Fol. 10r: St. Margaret standing with her cross-staff and the perching bird, the vanquished demon leaving her.
• Fol. 12v: The execution of St. Margaret with the three angels hovering over the scene.

• Smaller illustrations in black ink:
• Fol. 69r: St. Agatha with a torch in her left hand, a book in her right, and a lamb at her feet.
• Fol. 76r: St. Barbara with a book in her right hand, and a sword in her left; beside her an instrument, seemingly one of torture. Wolf ( Kirkjubæjarbók s. 534 ) sees a cactus, but also suggests that it could be the tower with which she is often provided.

Similar beasts appear in the form of initials on fols 49r (J; red) and 76r (Á; black)

• On fols 14r and 27v-28r, the alphabet is written in a seventeenth-century hand along with the formulaic prayer indicating the sign of the cross: i nafne faudur | og sonar og anda | heilags amen (fol. 27v), Signinginn (fol. 28r), and J nafne fødur og sonar og and|d heilags Amen (fol. 28r).
• On fol. 27v is also written that: þetta er bok Gudrunar | ad leika sier ad þui hun | rifnar ei þo ostillt sie mmed | fared.
• On fols 59v, 60r and 81r, some lines from Hallgrímur Pétursson's Passíusálmar are found, also in a seventeenth-century hand.
• A coarse sketch of St. Cecilia is found in the left margin of fol. 28v.

There is an AM-slip written in Árni Magnússon's hand, reading: Mitt, feinged af | Paale ä Floka-|stǫdum 429., followed by a list of contents. Similar information is found on fol. 29v in Árni Magnússon's catalogue of Icelandic parchment manuscripts, AM 435 a 4to.

Written in Iceland c. 1500.

Little is known about the provenance and the history of the manuscript, but it appears to have been owned by someone named Guðrún: On fol. 27v there is a marginal note in a seventeenth-century hand stating: þetta er bok Gudrunar | ad leika sier ad þui hun | rifnar ei þo ostillt sie med | fared.

According to the information of the AM-slip and on fol. 29v in AM 435 a 4to, Árni Magnússon acquired the manuscript from one Paale ä Flokastǫdum, presumably Páll Ámundason (c. 1645-1716), administrator of the convent at Kirkjubæjarklaustur from 1681 to c. 1708.

• Microfilm, neg. 400 from 1969
• Microfilm (master), neg. 926, from 1994.
• Microfilm (archive), pos. 824, from 1994.
• Microfilm (master), neg. 927, from 2003.
• Microfilm (archive), pos. 825, from 2003.
• 70 mm, 71, s.d.
• 70 mm, 204, s.d.
• 6x6, IIIs.d. (black and white photographs of the illustrations).
• Diapositives, pocket 18, from 2. august 1999 (colour diapositives of pp. 2, 28, 56, 96, 120, 137, and 151).
• Black and white prints from 1970.