Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1959, Side 155

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The version rimée has a number of additional laisses, but the MSS also
differ among themselves, e.g. L has omitted the first part of the poem
and also the Baligant episode. It would therefore be only natural if we
were to find traces of similar modifications of the original poem in Kms.
Most of the chansons de geste are preserved in 13th and, especially, 14th
century MSS, and in spite of numerous differences, these MSS usually
seem to represent “authorized versions”, edited at a comparatively late
period in the development of the genre, at a time when the poets and
remanieurs had worked out an elaborate set of rules which they had to
comply with, and when the themes of most of the poems were so widely
known that it was more difficult to introduce innovations. Whenever an
earlier version has survived, it usually differs sharply from the 13th cen-
tury Continental French form of the same poem, much more sharply than
the French poems differ among themselves (thus, O is Anglo-Norman, V4
Italian, possibly derived from a Norman source, the sole MS of the
Chanson de Guilalme was Anglo-Norman, etc.). In France these earlier
versions have been superseded by the rhymed versions of the 13th century,
and the earlier poems are usually known only from translations, or have
been preserved in Northern Italy or England, especially the latter. The
MSS used by the translators of Kms cannot have been written later than
in the early years of the 13th century, and they were consequently older
than most surviving French MSS. In addition to this it is likely that most
of these MSS came to Norway from England rather than from Continental
France, and that they represented versions that were already considered
oldfashioned in France. Theoretically, we should expect the version of the
Chanson de Roland translated in Kms to have differed materially from
the later French versions, and also from the surviving assonanced versions4.
As I have already pointed out, the simple metre and the relatively lax
structure of the chansons de geste (even the Chanson de Roland) make it
very easy for a remanieur to omit or add verses or even whole laisses. But
if the differences between the French MSS consisted of small and un-
systematic additions and omissions, it would scarcely be correct to de-
signate the MSS as so many different versions, e.g. there are many small
differences between C and V7, but they still constitute a single version.
A comparison between Kms and the French MSS immediately shows that
the differences are so fundamental that the saga must be regarded as an
4 Cp. Horrent, op. cit. pp. 422-23.