Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1959, Side 37
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and Eirtks saga rauba in the Hauksbok, and it is therefore a fair assump-
tion that the same holds good in the case of Tro)umanna saga and Breta
sggur. The language of the other version is typical “Translator’s Prose”,
with moderate use of rhetorical embellishments. But AM 573 is certainly
not a faithful copy of the original translation; among other things, it has
the Norse names of gods in some places where the Hauksbok has the
original Latin ones. It also introduces the beginning of Valvers påttr (the
rest of the MS is lost) at the end of the chapter dealing with King
Arthur’s death.
It has previously been thought, e.g. by Finnur Jonsson, that these sagas
were the work of Icelanders, and possibly belonged to the 12th or early
13th century. One faet which points to some interest in such matters in
early 13th century Iceland is the translation of the Pr ophedes of Merlin
made by the historian Gunnlaugr Leifsson, the Merlinusspå. But while it
is quite certain that Haukr knew that Gunnlaugr had translated the
Prophedes, it is equally certain that he did not associate the saga with the
same translator (vide his words, in Hauksbok, Copenhagen ed., p. 271).
The Prophedes have been added in the Hauksbok, but not in AM 573,
and from this it seems fair to infer that the saga and the poem were not
originally translated at the same time, to form parts of the same work, and,
further, we may assume that the reason for the translation is not the same
in both cases. The Prophedes were translated as prophecies, not as history.
The saga pretended to be history, and was accepted as such, and the
natural place for a translation of this kind is the Norwegian court at the
time of King Håkon. And since the language of the Hauksbok version is
not that of the original translation, we have to accept the style of AM
573 as a better, although not entirely satisfactory, specimen of the
language of the original translation. For these reasons, I am inelined to
count these two sagas among the works translated by order of King
Håkon5S.
18. Karlamagnus saga.
19. Flovents saga. The source is not the Chanson de Floovant, but
another French poem, the contents of which are preserved in the Italian
Reali di Francia. Four Icelandic MSS of the 14th and 15th centuries
by Sven B. F. Jansson in his book Sagorna om Vinland I (Stockholm 1945), see espe-
cially pp. 149-68, 261-62.
118 Cp. Jan de Vries: Altnordische Literaturgeschichte II (Berlin 1942), pp. 354-
355, and A. G. van Hamel in Etudes Celtiques 1936, pp. 197-247.