Uppbyggjingi av Fagrskinna B og sunnmørsættleggene

The manuscript known as Fagrskinna B was destroyed in the fire of Copenhagen in 1728. Its text has been preserved, however, in three academic transcripts from the late seventeenth century. The transcripts show that the manuscript had several lacunae, and some uncertainty about the location of these lacunae within the original manuscript has persisted. This article presents a new reconstruction of the quire structure of the manuscript and the placement of the lacunae, based on a comparison with transcripts of the sister manuscript Fagrskinna A, as well as the only surviving fragment of B, NRA 51. This reconstruction demonstrates that the genealogy called Arnmœðlingatal is complete in the transcripts. Moreover, the reconstruction reveals that the manuscript had a conspicuous blank space, spanning over one and a half page, which provides the key to understanding the connection between Fagrskinna B and some genealogies regarding families in Sunnmøre that Dr. Henrik Høyer (d. 1615/16) copied into AM 22 fol. at a time he had access to Fagrskinna B in Bergen.