Stories Set Forth with Fair Words

The Evolution of Medieval Romance in Iceland

Marianne E. Kalinke

• Publisher: University of Wales Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781786830678
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781786830692
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Medieval History
• Index: Literature

This book is an investigation of the foundation and evolution of romance in Iceland. The narrative type arose from the introduction of French narratives into the alien literary environment of Iceland and the acculturation of the import to indigenous literary traditions. The study focuses on the oldest Icelandic copies of three chansons de geste and four of the earliest indigenous romances, both types transmitted in an Icelandic codex from around 1300. The impact of the translated epic poems on the origin and development of the Icelandic romances was considerable, yet they have been largely neglected by scholars in favour of the courtly romances. This study attests the role played by the epic poems in the composition of romance in Iceland, which introduced the motifs of the aggressive female wooer and of Christian-heathen conflict.

1

Translation in Norway

Romance was introduced to the North with the rendering into Old Norse of Thomas de Bretagne’s Tristan at the behest of King Hákon Hákonarson of Norway (r. 1217–63). Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar was followed by the translation of a collection of French lays, several romances and one epic poem. Except for the Strengleikar, the collective title given to the Old Norse version of the lays, and Elíss saga ok Rósamundar, a translation of Élie de Saint-Gilles, a chanson de geste, no French texts translated in Norway have been preserved in Norwegian manuscripts. Despite the certain evidence that Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar, Ívens saga (Chrétien de Troyes’s Yvain) and Möttuls saga (Le Lai du cort mantel) were translated in Norway, these works have been transmitted solely in Icelandic manuscripts. These three narratives and other French romances believed to have been translated in Norway, such as Parcevals saga (Chrétien de Troyes’s Perceval), as well as translations of uncertain provenance, such as Erex saga (Chrétien de Troyes’s Erec et Enide) and Partalopa saga (Partonopeu de Blois), reveal a penchant of Icelanders for rewriting. They were self-assertive authors who revised, added, subtracted and restructured text. Despite the tremendous debt incurred to Norway for introducing continental literature to the North, the fact remains that most of the extant texts no longer substantially represent the Norse renderings. They are Icelandic redactions that manifest a diversity of approaches to transmitting this literature, including revision and recreation under the impact of indigenous traditions.

Some time during the reign of King Hákon Hákonarson, twenty-one Breton lays and the epic poem Élie de Saint-Gilles were translated into Old Norse. They are preserved in the Norwegian manuscript De la Gardie 4–7, dated around 1270. The Strengleikar collection and Elíss saga ok Rósamundar were copied only a couple of decades after their translation and are extraordinarily important, since they alone have been transmitted in a manuscript from their country of origin. Elíss saga is incomplete, for its French source was fragmentary, but only a couple of decades after it was written down in Norway, an Icelander copied it and supplied a continuation.¹ Two of the translated lays have also been transmitted in Icelandic redactions and are significant for assessing the relationship of the Norwegian texts to the original translation. The other translations known to have been commissioned by King Hákon or thought to have been translated during his reign have been preserved solely in Icelandic manuscripts dating some 150–450 years after their rendition.

Except for Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar and Elíss saga ok Rósamundar, the translators are anonymous. Tristrams saga opens with the statement that King Hákon commissioned Bróðir Robert, Brother Robert, in the year 1226 to translate the story of Tristram and Ísönd á norrænu (into Norse).² Elíss saga concludes with the similar statement that King Hákon had Roðbert ábóti, Abbot Robert, translate ‘þessi nœrrœnu bok yðr til skemtanar’³ (‘this Norse book for your enjoyment’). Scholars believe that Brother Robert and Abbot Robert are identical, the latter being older and having moved up in the monastic hierarchy. Just before this self-identification, Abbot Robert indicates that the story he has translated is incomplete. He writes: ‘En huessu sem Elis ratt þæim vandræðum oc huessu hann kom hæim til Frannz með Rosamundam, þa er æigi a bok þessi skrifat’ (p. 116) (‘But how Elis got out of these dificulties and how he came back home to France with Rosamunda is not written in this book’). The statement suggests that the manuscript from which Robert was translating did not have the complete text; it was defective, ending as it did in mid-story. An Icelander was to pick up later where Robert’s French manuscript left off and to produce a continuation.

Scholars generally take at face value the prologue of Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar that gives the date of translation, the name of the translator and that of his patron.⁴ Tristrams saga introduced a genre, courtly romance, and an alliterative prose style in Norway, both of which were to have a profound effect on the composition of romance in Iceland. The complete saga has been transmitted solely in seventeenth-century Icelandic manuscripts, however, and these diverge considerably from the thirteenth-century Norse rendering. Only the Strengleikar collection and Elíss saga ok Rósamundar are extant in a Norwegian manuscript produced within a couple of decades after their translation. They are the earliest witnesses to the transformation of verse into prose, the effect of the courtly Norse style on content, and the impact of scribal interference already in Norway on the texts that were subsequently imported to Iceland. The Breton lays were composed in octosyllabic rhymed couplets, while the chanson de geste from which Elíss saga derives features alexandrines in assonanced stanzas called laisses. Yet the two types of versification resulted in the same alliteratively ornamented prose in translation that is also found in the other translations known to have been undertaken during King Hákon’s reign.

Eleven of the Strengleikar narratives are attributed to Marie de France, and the entire collection is found only in the manuscript British Library, Harley 978. The manuscript Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, nouv. acq. fr. 1104 contains nine of her lays. The French lays in the Harley manuscript and their Norse versions in the De la Gardie manuscript preserve the largest number of Marie’s lays. The sources of six other Strengleikar are found in other collections, and the French sources of another four Strengleikar are no longer extant. In the earliest, nineteenth-century edition of the Strengleikar the editors voiced the belief that the De la Gardie manuscript contained ‘the first fair copy of the translator’s rough draft’.⁵ This position is no longer tenable.

The most comprehensive and detailed analysis of the Strengleikar collection and their sources, including all the extant French manuscripts, was undertaken by Ingvil Brügger Budal in her doctoral thesis of 2009.⁶ She notes that between the original translation, presumably in the period 1226–50, and its transmission in the manuscript De la Gardie 4–7, at least four redactors were at work, two of whom were scribes who may have produced the first copy of the translation. This manuscript, no longer extant, may have been the source of the copy in De la Gardie 4–7. Budal argues cogently that the translation was made not in Norway but rather in Anglo-Norman England. There is no evidence that Old French manuscripts were found in Norway at the time, but the translator would have had access to at least two manuscripts of French lays in England, where a number of Norwegians, both religious and lay, are known to have been in the period 1220–60.⁷ Budal demonstrates that deviations in the Norse translations vis-à-vis the French sources occurred at various stages of the text, commencing with variants in the extant French manuscripts themselves; conscious or accidental changes made by the translator, who, Budal argues, is the same for the entire collection; and modifications introduced by copyists of the Norse translation.⁸

The collection of lays in the Harley manuscript opens with a prologue of fifty-six verses in which Marie states that lays were composed by their authors to perpetuate the memory of adventures; some of these stories she herself has heard, and she has decided to put them into verse.⁹ The Norse translation contains a prologue, Forrœða, in which Marie’s preface is preceded by that of the translator who declares that the esteemed King Hákon had the lays translated from the French language into Norse for what may be called lioða bok (a book of lays), since Breton poets composed lays, lioðsonga, from the stories known to them.¹⁰ The translator goes on to say that these lays ‘are performed on harps, rebecs,¹¹ hurdy-gurdies, lyres, dulcimers, psalteries, rotes, and other stringed instruments – i … oðrum strænglæikum – of all kinds’.

In translation, the lays attributed to Marie de France have incurred reduction of text extending from 5 per cent to 49.5 per cent. Bisclaretz ljóð, which renders Marie’s Bisclavret, has suffered the least condensation; it lost sixteen of its 318 verses. This is followed by Desiré, a translation of an anonymous lay with the same name. At 764 verses, this lay is more than twice the length of Bisclavret, and forty-six of its verses are not found in the Norse translation.¹² Marie’s Bisclavret, like the sources of the other lays in the Strengleikar collection, is in verse. While the Norse renderings are in prose, this is a rhythmical language characterised by adjectival, nominal and verbal collocations, which occasionally are synonymous and not infrequently alliterate. For example, when Bisclavret’s wife asks him about his frequent absences, she says: ‘Sire, jeo sui en tel esfrei’ (v. 43) (‘Lord, I am so fraught with anxiety’).¹³ In Bisclaretz ljóð this is transmitted as: ‘Ec em þa iafnan rygg ok rædd ok i miklum angre’ (‘I am always sad and scared and in great sorrow’) (pp. 86–7). The single word esfrei is rendered with a triple collocation, of which two words alliterate (indicated in bold italics). Similarly, the wife’s exhortation to her lover to rejoice: ‘Amis, fete le, seiez liez’ (v. 111) (‘“Friend,” she said, “rejoice”’) is rendered, without alliteration, with a synonymous adjectival triplet: ‘Unasti vær nu fæginn. bliðr ok glaðr’ (‘Sweetheart, be joyous, happy, and glad’) (pp. 90–1). She goes on to offer him her love and body and in response he thanks her warmly and accepts her pledge: ‘Cil l’en mercie bonement / e la fiancé de li prent / e el le met par serement’ (vv. 117–19) (‘He thanked her warmly and accepted her pledge, whereupon she received his oath’) (p. 69). Here too the translator renders one word, fiancé, with an alliterating couplet and additionally elaborates similarly upon the meaning of the oath: ‘hann þakkaðe hænni morgum þokkum ok viðr tok tru hænnar ok trygðar fæstum. ok þui nest tok hann æið af hænni. at hann skylldi uruggr um væra ok bua uræddr’ (p. 90) (‘he thanked her with many thanks and accepted her promise and pledges of loyalty. Then he took an oath from her, that he might be confident of her and live unafraid’) (p. 91). Throughout not only Bisclaretz ljóð but also the other Strengleikar, the translator employs synonymous doublets and triplets, often alliterating, for dramatic emphasis and to convey emotion. The stylistic elaboration of the French text suggests a striving for euphony by the Norse translator.

Despite the loss of sixteen verses from Bisclavret, the Norse translation adheres relatively closely to its source. There is, however, one remarkable deviation from the French lay that at first blush suggests either a conscious change or suppression of text. When Bisclavret, in the company of the king, sees his faithless wife for the first time, he takes singular revenge; he tears the nose off her face: ‘Le neis li esracha del vis’ (v. 235). The Norse translation diverges: ‘hann uppræistizc ok ræif af hænni klæði sin’ (‘he reared up and tore off her clothes’) (pp. 94–5). In his classic study of the Strengleikar, Rudolf Meissner suggested over a century ago that the Norse translator had recoiled at such harsh vengeance, and has only her clothes ripped off.¹⁴ His interpretation of this difference rests on the firm conviction that the extant Norwegian manuscript faithfully transmits the work of a translator who intentionally recreated the French texts (p. 293). I suggest here, and have done so elsewhere, that deletion of the lost nose in favour of lost clothes was not the work of the translator but rather of a later scribe.¹⁵

An Icelandic redaction of Bisclaretz ljóð with the deviating title Tiódels saga here reads: ‘reyf af henne oll hennar klæde og þar med nefid og vyda holldid kramid’ (11. 240–1)¹⁶ (‘He tore all her clothes off her along with the nose and scrat...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Chapter 1. Translation in Norway
• Chapter 2. Tinkering with the Translations
• Chapter 3. Chansons de geste in Iceland
• Chapter 4. Stories Set Forth with Fair Words
• Chapter 5. Icelandic Innovations
• Chapter 6. The Beginnings of Icelandic Romance
• Chapter 7. Icelandic Romance as Critique and Sequel
• Epilogue
• Notes
• Bibliography