Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1959, Qupperneq 42
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prose and rhetorical devices in poetry contributed to the confusion63. To
the mediæval teachers of grammar and rhetoric the difference in quality
between the different styles became more important than the distinction
between verse and prose, and thus Robert the Abbot and the translator of
the Strengleikar were, from a mediæval point of view, quite justified in
their choice of a strongly rhetorical prose to replace the rhythmical verse
of their sources. This “Court Style” became the recognized pattern
throughout the reign of King Håkon the Old, and the best and most
effective “Court Prose” is written, not by any of the translators, but by
the author of the only original work of real merit written in Norway in
the 13th century, the Konungs Skuggsja (Speculum Regale). Many of the
translators did not use the elaborate “Court Prose”, either because they
did not care to, or, and this is the more likely explanation, because they
found it too difficult (cp. above, p. 10). The Icelandic scribes of the later
Middle Ages did not appreciate this style, and they frequently changed the
wording of the sagas they copied to get rid of what they must have con-
sidered superfluous words. For this reason it is unfortunate that so many
of the romantic sagas are preserved only in Icelandic copies, some of them
very late64.
In Norway, this literature has left traces in ballads, but it appears that
works of this kind were no longer read by the nobility af ter the 14th
century. After 1319, there was no court in Norway for years on end, and
when, after the Black Death (1349-50), the lower nobility, the “squires”,
the backbone of the old system, became too impoverished to maintain their
old way of life, and to send their sons to serve the king, there was no
longer any use for this court literature. The few noble families of the first
order intermarried with Swedish and Danish families, and became more
and more “Scandinavianized”, and they were naturally no longer inter-
ested in this, to them, oldfashioned literature. Many old manuscripts were
still preserved, but they were apparently never copied, and when in the
16th century the linguistic development in Norway had made the old
language almost unintelligible to all but a few “lawmen”, most of the
manuscripts were lost. The same thing happened to the old religious litera-
ture, but in this case mueh was destroyed at the introduction of the Re-
formation. In Iceland too the old manuscripts were lost, but here not so
63 Cp. E. R. Curtius: Europaische Literatur und lateinisches Mittelalter, pp. 156-
161.
64 Cp. R. Meissner: Die Strengleikar, pp. 226-34.