Gripla - 2020, Page 153

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to eavesdrop and spy. It is only in AM 521 c 4to that Talirus is received
into the camp and has an actual conversation with Ambáles as the camp’s
representative. Likewise, it is only in AM 521 c 4to that an olive-branch
is mentioned.
The aim here has not been to determine the relationship between the
different texts of Ambáles saga and Ambáles rímur. Nevertheless, if the text
in AM 521 c 4to is dependent upon the rímur or the other prose text, then
the scribe has clearly made significant additions.67 Alternatively, if the text
in AM 521 c 4to stands before the other versions in the textual tradition,
then it has retained a number of interesting details which have been lost in
the later versions. In either case, source material has been made use of, but
preexisting scholarship on Ambáles rímur and Ambáles saga provide little
help in identifying it. That is because most preexisting work has focused
on a comment in the mansöngur [approx. poetic introduction] to one of
the fitts of the rímur which reads ‘Að sönnu téðan sagna þátt / sá eg títt
að vana; / í þýzku máli eg hef átt / áður forðum hanaʼ [In truth I was in
the habit of looking at the account in question. Earlier on, I had it in the
German language].68 Based on this comment it has often been suspected
that Ambáles rímur (and thus by extension Ambáles saga) build upon a
German source. Since it is specifically the more traditionally Amlethus/
Hamlet features which have interested scholars, speculation about the
German source has focused on the epitome of Saxo previously attributed
to Thomas Gheysmer which was published in Low German in 1485.69
That work could certainly have influenced the sections of the saga which
correspond more closely to material found in the Gesta Danorum, but there
is no known source, German or otherwise, which mixes material about
Amlethus with material about Timur. It may be that such a composite
source exists but is as yet unidentified, but it seems more likely that the
Icelandic authors responsible for the rímur or sagas are also responsible
for joining these two traditions together in literary form. Accepting this
67 In favour of this interpretation are the details in AM 521 c 4to which seem to be errors but
where a more correct form appears in AM 521 b 4to and the rímur. For example, in the first
passage quoted above Bastíanus is said to be besieging Constantinople with 4,000 men,
a not particularly impressive troop, as compared to the more hyperbolically impressive
400,000 men in the other two versions.
68 Ambáles rímur, 225.
69 See Gollancz, Hamlet in Iceland, 260–73, for both the Latin and Low German texts.