Studia Islandica - 01.07.1966, Page 41

39
magne both preserve a motive from the original text of the
poem which is omitted in the surviving French version.
The indications are, therefore, that the author of Rauð-
úlfs þáttr knew the story of Charlemagne’s travels in the
east in a version independent of the translation preserved
in Karlamagnus saga. It is possible that his source was oral,
but the detailed correspondences between the descriptions of
the buildings in Le Voyage de Charlemagne and that in the
þáttr make it seem more likely that he knew the story in a
written version. It is not likely that the story was trans-
lated into Old Norse more than once, and it is quite possible
that he had it in French (or, conceivably, Latin).
There are three loan-words from French in RaúSúlfs
þáttr. One is kurteisi (OF corteisie), which is perhaps too
common in Old Norse to provide evidence that the author
of the þáttr knew French, although it cannot appear very
often in Icelandic texts written in the early thirteenth cen-
tury (the adjective corteis occurs several times in Le Voyage
de Charlemagne). Another is purtréat (ÓII 668/4, cf. v.l.).
If this was the original reading, it is probably the first oc-
currence of this word in Old Norse (it was sufficiently
strange to cause the copyists of the þáttr some difficulty: the
manuscripts have purcreat, putreat, puterat, pentat) and
could be taken to imply that the author knew French. It is
from OF pourtraire (later portraire), found in literature
from the twelfth to eighteenth centuries, but never common:
certainly not a colloquial word in either language, and not
one likely to have found its way into Old Norse except as a
literary loan. Pourtraire does not occur in the surviving
text of Le Voyage de Charlemagne, nor does purtréa occur
in Karlamagnus saga. The third loan-word is flúr (in all
manuscripts of the þáttr, ÓH 677/7). This is probably the
first appearance of this word also in Old Norse (in the mean-
ing “flower” x). Like purtréa, it is found mainly in trans-
1 Flúr (“flower”) also appears in the thirteenth century Barlaams
ok Josaphats saga (ed. R. Keyser and C. R. Unger, Kristiania 1851),