Skáldskaparmál - 01.01.1992, Side 245

Reykjabólabók
243
well as compilations, primarily the Middle High German Verse-Passional
(ca. 1300) and Márterbuch (1320/30), and the Latin Legenda aurea, Spe-
culum historiale, and Vitaspatrum.10 Thus, the Legenda aurea was only one
of several sources used by the compiler of Der Heiligen Leben.
It is understandable that Widding and Bekker-Nielsen considered the
German compilation of saints’ lives the source of Reykjahólabók. Not only
was it the most widely read and easily available vernacular anthology of the
time, but the resemblance of the Icelandic legends in content and language to
those in the Passionael is remarkable. The impact of Low German both in
regard to loan words and loan constructions on the language of Reykja-
hólabók is so blatant and pervasive that Low German derivation cannot be
denied, indeed can easily be demonstrated. Nonetheless, the legends in
Reykjahólabók are much longer than those in the Passionael, and the
relationship between the Icelandic and Low German redactions is more
often than not similar to that existing between the full form of a narrative
and its abridged version. Or, to put it another way, the narratives in the
Passionael consistently adhere to the generic conventions of the short
hagiographic form, the prose legend, whereas most of the demonstrably
translated narratives in Reykjahólabók exhibit the formal characteristics of
longer, fictional genres, as will be seen.
Despite a notable disparity in length, there are nevertheless recurrent, but
inconsistently intermittent, word-for-word correspondences between the
Icelandic and Low German legends. Were it not that what appear to be exact
translations of passages in the Passionael are time and again interspersed with
seemingly interpolated matter in the Icelandic legends, one could justifiably
consider the Passionael the source of Reykjahólabók. So striking are the
repeated similarities in wording between the Icelandic and Low German
texts that in a second article devoted to Reykjahólabók Ole Widding and
Hans Bekker-Nielsen classified the Icelandic legends according to their
textual proximity to the Passionael, on the assumption that the former are
translations of the latter.11
The Danish scholars arrived at four groupings: 1) legends in which the
narrative follows “the Passionael very closely” and “the style (and
vocabulary) is much influenced by Low German” (p. 247); 2) legends in
which the translator “has sacrificed strict literalness, and has now and again
included commonplaces of a pious nature to edify his audience... . the
legends of this group follow the Low German versions closely, if not always
soberly” (p. 248); 3) legends in which “literalness has been completely
abandoned, but the composition is nevertheless modeled on the versions in
the Passionael, and the framework of the Icelandic and the Low German
10 Williams-Krapp, Die deutschen und niederlándischen Legendare, pp. 272-73.
11 “Low German Influence on Late Icelandic Hagiography,” The GermanicReview, 37
(1962), 237-62.