Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1959, Síða 259
245
However the parallels are here very vague, and the main points of the
story in O, Charlemagne’s speech, Ganelon’s defence, and his appeal to
Pinabel, have disappeared.
The version rimée has the same story as O, but with a number of added
details, and with very few reminiscences of O in its verses: Ganeion
escapes and is recaptured, the Pinabel episode is much longer, etc. Not a
single verse in this part of the version rimée is doser to the text of the
saga than the O verses already quoted, and if the author has used the O
and the Kms versions in this part of his work, he has completely changed
them.
Storm80 thought that the Pinabel episode had been omitted by the trans-
lator, because he found the whole procedure of a judicial combat barbaric
and contrary to the laws of his own country. But it is highly unlikely that
any translator would dåre to brand as inhuman a procedure sanctioned by
Charlemagne, the greatest of Christian emperors. It is true, as Storm
observes, that the Old Norwegian Laws are fairly humane as far as
punishments are concerned (the same applies to the laws of the other
Northern countries, of course), but the reason is not so much the presence
of a humane tradition as the lack of a strong central authority to enforce
punishments in the times from which our legal traditions date. The treat-
ment of some of the less fortunate princes and chiefs during the civil wars
of the 12th century shows that the humane spirit of the laws had little in-
fluence on the actions of men who were at war. The judicial combat was
certainly not recognized as a valid procedure in cases of high treason in
Norway, but the point here is that the combat has nothing whatever to
do with existing laws in any country. Whatever the laws might lay down,
no European king in the 12th century would have allowed a Ganeion to
get away with treason in this way. The combat is necessary because it
allows Divine intervention to decide the issue, and no mediæval scribe or
editor could have failed to recognize in Pinabel’s defeat a well deserved
punishment for having championed an unjust cause, and the death of 30
of Ganelon’s kinsmen is just retribution too: they had become hostages,
not because they thought Ganeion was innocent, but because they did not
believe that any man would dåre accept Pinabel’s challenge. They are the
opponents of Di vine justice, and therefore they deserve to die. The only
thing that might have disturbed the scribe is the cruelty of the punishment
Sagnkredsene, pp. 24-25.