Njáls Saga Stemmas, Old And New

Abstract

Despite its fame as the pre-eminent medieval Icelandic saga, Njals saga lacks a stemma comprehending all the saga’s manuscripts: only the vellum manuscripts have been surveyed in detail. As part of the Variance of Njals saga (Breytileki Njals sogu) project, we produced a stemma of all witnesses to chapter 86 (forty-nine out of the total sixty or so surviving manuscripts and fragments), supplemented with targeted samples from chapter 142 (32 manuscripts). This affords the first systematic insight into the post-medieval manuscript transmission of the saga. The present article focuses on two aspects of the post-medieval transmission which turn out to be of particular interest: the huge popularity of the lost medieval manuscript *Gullskinna in the post-medieval scribal tradition, and a revision of the branch of the Njals saga stemma labelled as *Y by Einar Olafur (noted for being represented by Oddabok, AM 466 4to).