The Arthur of the North

The Arthurian Legend in the Norse and Rus' Realms

Marianne E. Kalinke, Marianne E. Kalinke

• Publisher: University of Wales Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781783164554
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Littérature
• Subtopic: Critique littéraire médiévale et du début des temps modernes

The Arthur of the North is the first book-length study of the Arthurian literature that was translated from French and Latin into Old Norse-Icelandic in the thirteenth century, which has been preserved mostly in Icelandic manuscripts, and which in early modern times inspired the composition of narrative poems and chapbooks in Denmark, Iceland and Norway, chiefly of the Tristan legend. The importation of Arthurian literature in the North, primarily French romances and lais, is indebted largely to the efforts of King Hákon Hákonarson (r. 1217–63) of Norway, who commissioned the translation of Thomas de Bretagne's Tristan in 1226, and subsequently several Arthurian romances by Chrétien de Troyes and a number of Breton lais. The translations are unique in that the French metrical narratives were rendered in prose, the traditional form of narrative in the North. The book concludes with a chapter on Arthurian literature in the Rus' area, precisely East Slavic, with a focus on the Belarusian Trys?an.

2

SOURCES, TRANSLATIONS, REDACTIONS,MANUSCRIPT TRANSMISSION

Marianne E. Kalinke

Study of the Arthurian matter translated in Norway and Iceland is complicated by the fact that in no case do we have the manuscript from which a text was translated, be that French or Latin, and in no instance has a manuscript been preserved that represents the actual translation, be that into Norwegian or Icelandic. Even the only Norwegian manuscript that postdates by only a few decades the translation of a group of short narratives has been shown to be an unreliable witness of the actual translation.

In the transmission of the matière de Bretagne to the North a twofold cultural transfer took place: on the one hand, the introduction of courtly romance, which heretofore had been unknown in both Iceland and Norway; on the other hand, the introduction of metrical narrative which, with the exception of the mythological and heroic Eddic poetry, was also foreign to the North. The normal form of narrative in Iceland and Norway was prose and the Arthurian rhymed romances underwent a formal acculturation by being rendered in prose. Complicating further the introduction of the Arthurian matter in thirteenth-century Norway is the fact that the translations are preserved, with but one exception, solely in Icelandic manuscripts, the complete texts of most dating from the seventeenth century.

Not only the fact that in most instances centuries intervened between a translation and its transmission in manuscript but also a peculiar propensity of some Icelandic copyists to understand their task more as that of a revising editor than a mindless scribe means that in quite a few instances the manuscripts transmitting the matière de Bretagne in the North cannot be considered to represent the thirteenth-century translations. Occasionally, recourse to all manuscripts of an Arthurian translation permits a reconstruction that brings us close to what the original text must have contained, but this is usually the case only for select passages, not an entire work. Consequently, scholarly debate on the Old Norse translations frequently focuses on the question whether they provide insight into the work of the translators in thirteenth-century Norway or the creative endeavours of later Icelandic scribes. Are the deviations of these texts from their sources, be that in content or structure, to be understood as evidence of acculturation at the court of King Hákon Hákonarson or in the rural environs of Iceland?

No other Arthurian literature has generated as much discussion concerning the relationship of translations and their sources as that transmitted in Old Norse-Icelandic texts. Repeatedly scholars have addressed the reliability of the extant texts not only for assessing the abilities of the translators but also for the insight they give into the cultural context and motivation that permitted the importation to Norway and Iceland of a literature quite foreign. Given the manuscript transmission of the translations undertaken in thirteenth-century Norway and Iceland, the crucial question is whether the Arthurian texts in the Icelandic manuscripts that preserve the medieval translations actually correspond to those translations or whether they are to be considered late medieval and early modern Icelandic reworkings of those translations. If the extant Icelandic manuscripts do not transmit more or less reliably the texts produced by thirteenth-century translators, mostly in Norway, then how is this corpus of Arthuriana to be understood: as a Norwegian product of a royal court or an Icelandic product of a rural society? The degree to which the Icelandic redactions approximate the Norwegian translations has been a contentious issue and the position taken by scholars has influenced their understanding of the purpose of the translated literature – for entertainment or edification or both – at King Hákon Hákonarson’s thirteenth-century Norwegian court.

The translation and transmission of the matière de Bretagne in Norway and Iceland has confronted scholars with issues and problems absent in other Arthurian literatures, in part because of the drastic alterity of Arthurian narrative vis-à-vis the indigenous Norse literature, in part because of the vagaries of Icelandic manuscript transmission. This is unlike the transmission of French romance in the German-language area, for example, where the oldest Arthurian romance is Hartmann von Aue’s (c.1160–c.1210) late twelfth-century version of Chrétien de Troyes’s Erec et Enide. Hartmann’s Erec is preserved in one (almost) complete manuscript, in the so-called Ambraser Heldenbuch, compiled by Hans Ried around 1510 and commissioned by Emperor Maximilian I (Gibbs and Johnson 1997, 135). Despite a gap of three centuries between the time of composition and this copy, scholars accept the manuscript as representing more or less Hartmann’s Erec. The case is otherwise in the North, where not only the interval between translation and copy but also the significant discrepancies among the preserved manuscripts prove to be major obstacles to assessing the character of the thirteenth-century translations.

Translations and their sources

Not a single manuscript from which an Arthurian text was translated in either Norway or Iceland has been either preserved or identified. The translations deviate in many respects from the sources available to us in editions. The question at all times is whether the deviations, be they modifications of content or additions, are to be ascribed to the unknown source manuscript, the translator or a later copyist. The one certainty about the matière de Bretagne in the North is that the text as it exists in any one manuscript is a text that was known and enjoyed in Iceland at a particular time.

A case in point is Breta sögur, the Icelandic version of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae, which is extant in two fourteenth-century redactions, AM 573 4to and AM 544 4to, the latter generally referred to as Hauksbók after its redactor Haukr Erlendsson (d. 1334), who transmits a greatly reduced version of Breta sögur. Geoffrey’s Historia was known in Iceland by the end of the twelfth century, and it is safe to assume that the translation of the Historia occurred around the year 1200, presumably in the Benedictine monastery of Þingeyrar, a centre of historiography in late twelfth- and early thirteenth-century Iceland, and the home of the monk Gunnlaugr Leifsson (d.1218 or 1219), the author of Merlínússpá, the translation of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s ‘Prophetiae Merlini’. We do not know whether the text of the ‘Prophecies’ was a separate work or whether it was available to Gunnlaugr as part of the Historia.

The AM 573 redaction of Breta sögur transmits a version of Geoffrey’s Arthurian matter that approximates in many respects the narrativization and fictionalization that we are wont to associate with courtly romance rather than historiography. This redaction of Breta sögur pays heed to emotions, to courtly ceremonial, to the dramatic interaction of characters and to visual detail. A comparison with Geoffrey’s Historia and with other translations and redactions of the same reveals that the source of the Icelandic translation could not have been the Latin text known to us today in the several editions. A case in point is a minor detail in the depiction of Arthur’s coronation. We are told that archbishops accompanied the queen to her seat and that four kings walked before her who ‘báru með sínum höndum fiórar huítar dúfur, sua sem sníorr’ (bore in their hands four doves, white as snow) (Jón Sigurdsson edn 1849, 100). Geoffrey’s Historia has a variant of this detail: not four kings walked before the queen, but rather the wives of these kings (Reeve edn 2007, 213). While one might attribute the deviation in Breta sögur to a translator’s lapse, the very same variant is found, however, in the metrical version, Gesta regum Britannie, where we read: ‘Quam precedentes precedunt bis duo reges / Portantes manibus albas de more columbas’ (Before her walk four kings, carrying, according to custom, white doves in their hands) (Wright edn and trans. 1991), vv. 429–30). The accord of the readings in the Icelandic translation with the metrical Latin version suggests that the source of Breta sögur did indeed contain the deviating reading.

Similarly, in the account of the festivities following Arthur’s coronation, Geoffrey summarizes: ‘Refecti tandem epulis, diuersi diuersos ludos composituri campos extra ciuitatem adeunt’ (Reeve edn 2007, 213) (When at last they had had their fill at the banquets, they separated to visit the fields outside the city and indulge in varied sports) (Wright trans. 2007, 212), whereas Breta sögur provides details. Geoffrey’s ‘diuersi diuersos ludos composituri’ are listed: ‘þá voru leikar oc taufl oc saugur. Þar var allzkyns streingleikar: fiðlur oc gígiur, bumbur oc pípur oc simphóníam oc haurpur’ (there were games of chance and board games and stories; there were all kinds of stringed instruments, fiddles and viols, drums and pipes and hurdy-gurdies and harps) (Jón Sigurdsson edn 1849, 100–1). That the enumeration in Breta sögur is not the work of the translator is attested by the corresponding passage in Wace’s Roman de Brut, which reports at even greater length on the music and games played on the occasion (Weiss edn 2002, vv. 10,543–60). Comparison with Wace’s Brut reveals that many of the passages and details in Breta sögur that are not found in the Historia also occur in French translation, and this suggests that the source of Breta sögur was a Latin redaction that had expatiated on the Historia, that is, as we know it today, and this was in many respects similar to one of Wace’s sources. The example given here is only one of many passages containing additional details in Breta sögur that agree with text in Wace’s Brut. Others occur neither in the Historia nor the Brut, but taken together they attest that the Latin redaction available to the translator of Breta sögur contained a text of the Arthurian legend that deviated in many respects from the Historia as we know it.

The divergences occur not only in respect to detail but also the structure of the narrative. One of the more noteworthy structural discrepancies concerns the location in the narrative of Arthur’s two encounters with giants, with the giant of Mont-Saint-Michel and the giant Ritho who challenged kings, including finally Arthur, to give him their beards so that he might fashion a cloak from them. In the Historia the two episodes relating Arthur’s encounters with giants succeed each other (Reeve edn 2007, 224–7). After having slain the giant of Mont-Saint-Michel, Arthur comments that he had never met anyone as strong other than the giant he had killed on Mount Aravius. This had taken place on an earlier occasion, and thus the episode is recounted as a flashback by Geoffrey. This is also the case in the Roman de Brut. In Breta sögur, however, the encounter with the beard-collecting giant, here called Rikion, occurs at what one redactor must have considered the chronologically more appropriate place, that is, after Arthur’s killing of Frollo in single combat. The aptness of having the episode with the giant Rikion follow hard upon Arthur’s single combat with Frollo may have been suggested by the manner in which Frollo is depicted in Breta sögur, and presumably in its Latin source. Frollo is described as being ‘mikill sem risar oc suartr sem iörð, oc var þó meira afl en uauxtr, hann var oc allra manna fimaztr til vapns oc því var trautt menzkra manna at eiga við hann vapnaskipti’ (Jón Sigurdsson edn 1849, 96, fn. 1) (large like giants and black as earth, yet this was more due to physical strength than size; he was the most dexterous of all men in wielding weapons and for this reason human beings were reluctant to engage him in combat). Even though Frollo is not identified as a giant, the reference to menzkra manna ‘human beings’ suggests that there is something of the monster in him. Thus, Arthur’s slaying of Frollo seems to be a logical preliminary to his encounter with Rikion, who is identified as ‘nálega risi at ...