Studia Islandica - 01.07.1966, Blaðsíða 43

41
its way to Iceland in a Latin version. But the appearance of
French texts and translations in Iceland around 1200 need
occasion no surprise: Iceland was hy no means isolated from
European cultural influences in the twelfth and early thir-
teenth centuries.1
There are indications that the version of Le Voyage de
Charlemagne known to the author of RauSúlfs þáttr, what-
ever language it was in, was in some respects more similar
to the text which was the basis of the Welsh translation
than to either the surviving Anglo-Norman text or the
Norse translation in Karlamagnus saga. In the Welsh ver-
sion the church and the sleeping chamber are described
very briefly, hut the revolving palace in more detail than
in either the Anglo-Norman or Old Norse versions. While
the astrological motives in the two latter versions are very
much in the background, and are associated with the church,
as are the decorations representing the sky, the sea, and the
sea creatures, in the Welsh version these are all part of the
decorations of the revolving hall, as in Rauðúlfs þáttr, and
the astrological motives are much more explicit:
Singular and wonderful the king of France thought
the nature of the hall: sculptured in the floor appeared
the likeness of all the animals, both wild and tame. In
the entrance at its lower end, that is below the entrance,
there was sculptured the likeness of the sea and every
kind of piscine creature bred in the sea. In the sides of
the hall was the likeness of the sky and every bird that
flew in it just as though it were the air. The top of the
hall had the form and aspect of the firmament with the
sun, the moon and the stars and the constellations ar-
ranged in the firmament so that they shone in the top
1 See Alexander Jóhannesson, “Menningarsamband Frakka og Is-
lendinga,” Studia Islandica 9 [1944]; Sigurður Nordal, Litteratur-
historie: Norge og Island, Nordisk Kultur VIII: B (Uppsala 1953), pp.
206—208.