Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1959, Blaðsíða 27
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jongleurs and sung in the marketplaces, but poems like those of Chrétien
de Troyes can scarcely ever have appealed to the simple tastes of the or-
dinary people. The poems are usually in rhymed couplets, consisting of
octosyllabic lines. Both their form and their matter have therefore pre-
served these works from the changes undergone at the hånds of generations
of jongleurs by the chansons de geste. There are different versions of some
of these works too, but the alterations are never as sweeping as in the
chansons de geste.
Lastly, there are the fabliaux, which represent, as it were, a reaction
against the high ideals of the romances; they poke fun at the high and
mighty, pour scorn on the clergy, and are full of realistic details of every-
day life. Only one of them has been translated into Old Norse, the up-
roariously funny and disrespectful tale of the Mantel mautaillié.
The lyrical poetry of the troubadours was naturally unknown in the
North, but not even the French variety seems to have reached Norway,
except indirectly, through the Lais of Marie de France. And the prose
romances, the first of which date from about 1200, were apparently un-
known; all the Old Norse translations are based on the metrical versions,
and there is not the slightest reason for believing that the plain, flexible
prose of these French works has had any influence on the highly rhetorical
style of the translations.
Beside the vernacular literature, there is also a vigorous Latin secular
literature, in prose as well as in verse. Only a small selection of such
works were translated, such as Geoffrey of Monmouth’s famous History
of the Kings of Britain, the Chronicle of Pseudo-Turpin, and the Alexan-
dreis of Gautier de Chåtillon.
III
The C ourt Literature in Norway
As far as we know, the translations were carried out during the period
1220-1320. Of this “Court Literature”, about twenty “sagas” have been
preserved, some of them vast collections, others only short fragments. In
the 14th and 15th centuries many of them were very popular in Iceland,
and a number of Icelandic imitations are known. It is in general easy to
distinguish between the original romantic sagas and the imitations, pri-
marily because the French or Latin sources are known, but also because