SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

334 Saga-Book of the Viking Society
mala - its only remarkable deviation from the genuine
"Bergr-profile". On that point - the distribution of
mcelalsegjalsoara - its ratios are practically identical
with those of Jon A. But in other cases the trend from
A to B towards the "Bergr-profile" is quite clear. Thus,
the low frequency of reverse word order in A, II per cent,
has been raised to 44 per cent in B. And the rate of
present tense in A, II'5 per cent, has become 24 per cent
in B - still on an average "Saga level", it is true, but a
high frequency within the whole genre of Bishops' sagas,
and after all a definite step in the direction of the "Bergrtexts".
As for the vocabulary lists iddsama etc. and
einkanliga etc.), A has a total frequency of merely
2·8/roooo, distributed over only 3 different words, and
these probably the least distinctive ones:jorsjd (r),jullting
(3), optliga (r). The corresponding figures for Bare
r6/roooo and 9 respectively.I''
V
In my paper 'Jons saga helga' I constructed a special
vocabulary test, built on Jon B. From that text I picked
out a sample of words which seemed to me remarkable in
some way and which were all completely absent in A.
As the writer of B had introduced them, they ought to be
more or less characteristic of his manner of expressing
himself. The different words, 45 in all, were distributed
- alternately according to alphabetical order - in two
lists with 23 and 22 words respectively, with a view to
providing a means of checking the homogeneity and
reliability of the test. It is important that this test was
constructed for the two versions of J ons saga helga only,
with no regard whatsoever to my former "Bergr-texts",
and still less to Dunst, which was then not in my mind at all.
I list here the words of my first "J6n-B-series", with
their meanings summarily indicated: andar- 'spiritual' (in
compounds, as andarhjdlp) , dikt 'form, writing', flekka
19 Cf. 'J6ns saga helga' (note 2 above), 64-7.