Skáldskaparmál - 01.01.1997, Page 229

Words, Words, Words:
Textual variation in Skikkjurímur
MATTHEW JAMES DRISCOLL
Rímur, although without question the single most popular literary genre of
post-classical Iceland, have been largely neglected by literary historians.1 Skikkju-
rímur, composed by an unknown poet in the early or mid fifteenth century, are
among the few to have have received scholarly attention, due chiefly to their being
an adaptation of Möttuls saga, itself a thirteenth-century Norwegian translation
of the twelfth-century French lai known variously as Le Mantel mautaillié or Le
Lai du cort mantel.2 The basic plot relates how, on the feast of the Pentecost, a
young man arrives at the court of King Arthur asking, in the name of his lady, a
favour. The king, being the sort of fellow he is, agrees, without knowing what the
favour is. The young man then produces a mantle which, he explains, will fit
perfectly a chaste maiden or a faithful wife, but will reveal whether, and in what
way, a woman has been unfaithful to her husband or beloved. The noble ladies
of Arthur’s court are then put to the test, and, one by one, are all found to be less
than virtuous, until at last a young woman is found whom the mantle fits
perfectly. All three works then end with statements to the effect either that the
mantle has recently come to light and will soon be appearing at a court near you,
or at least that it ought to, since in terms ofwomen’s constancy things have hardly
1 The best general work on the medieval rímur is Björn Karel Þórólfsson’s Rímurfyrir 1600, Safn
Fræðafjelagsins um ísland og íslendinga, IX (Copenhagen, 1934); on rímur generally and their
place in the ‘eco-system of Icelandic story-telling’ see Davíð Erlingsson, ‘Prose and Verse in
Icelandic Legendary Fiction’, The Heroic Process: Form, Function, andFantasy in Folk Epic, ed.
Bo Almqvist et al. (Dublin, 1987), pp. 371-93, and ‘Rímur’, Munnmenntir og hókmenning,
íslensk þjóðmenning, VI (Reykjavík, 1989), pp. 330-55. Shaun F.D. Hughes, ‘Report on
Rímur 1980’, Joumal of English and Germanic Philology, LXXIX (1980), pp. 477-98, and
‘Rímur’, Dictionary of the Middle Ages (New York, 1982-89), X, pp. 401-7, provides a concise
history of the genre and comprehensive bibliography.
2 The standard edition of Möttuls saga is that of Marianne Kalinke, Moffiils saga, Editiones
Arnamagnæanæ, Series B, vol. XXX (Copenhagen, 1987); there are two older editions, those
of Gustaf Cederschiöld, Versions nordiques du fabliau franfais ‘Le mantel mautaillié’(Lund,
1877), and Gísli Brynjúlfsson, Saga af Tristram ok ísöndsamt Möttulssaga (Copenhagen, 1878).
l.e Mantel mautaillié has been edited by Philip Bennett, Mantel et Cor: Deux lais du Xlle si'ecle
(Exeter, 1975). Bennett’s edition also appears facing the Old Norse text in Marianne Kalinke’s
edition of the saga. An edition of the poem by Ferdinand Wulff faced Cederschiöld’s edition
of Möttuls saga in Versions nordiques. The rímur have been edited twice, first by Cederschiöld
in Versions nordiques, pp. 51-82, and subsequently by Finnur Jónsson in Rímnasajh: Samling
af de aldste islandske Rimer, Samfund til Udgivelse af gammel nordisk Litteratur, XXXV
(Copenhagen, 1905-23), II, pp. 327-56. On the history of this material generally see the
introduction to Kalinke’s edition, pp. xv-xxxiii.