SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

280 Saga-Book oj the Viking Society
existence of some special predilection for St Margaret.
And I would guess that the prayers following the
M argretar saga were in every case prayers for safe delivery
in childbirth.
More than half of the post-Reformation manuscripts of
the M argretar saga contain other matter of a kind that
makes it likely that they were intended for reading for
entertainment. The catalogues enumerate items such as
sagas, saga fragments, cevintyri, biographies, poems,
rimur and hymns. The title given to the M argretar saga
in these collections sometimes appears as "lEfintyr af
peirri heilOgu mey Margretu", "Lifsaga stellrar Margretar
meyar", or "Ein historia urn Fru Margretu". One such
collection (JS 43 4to) has as its whole title: "Ein
Agiset Nitsom fr6dleg Lysteleg SkemmteRijk og Artug
Book Innehaldande ... lEfesaugur ... Samanntekenn
af Virduglegum hOfdings manne Magmise Ioonssyne
ad Wigur". But in many manuscripts the M argretar
saga is accompanied by other matter which is
variously described in the catalogues as miscellanea,
miscellaneous collections, dreams, dream interpretations,
magic, and it is not always possible to tell precisely what
sort of material is covered by such items. Natural history
and medical lore are found in two of the manuscripts
containing the saga, and Lbs 405 8vo, written about 1850,
includes "Sagann af mey Margrietu" and "Lausn
H(eilagrar) Meyar Marin". Such manuscripts seem on the
whole to have been intended to serve didactic and practical
purposes, but it cannot be seen from the catalogues that
any of them contain matter designed to help women in
childbirth. This requires further investigation in the
manuscripts themselves. An examination of the copies
of the M argretar saga in the Landsb6kasafn fslands leads
to the conclusion that they differ from the pre-Reformation
copies in that they are found neither with other saints'
lives nor with formulae designed to help women in
childbirth. It seems rather as if in Lutheran times the