Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1975, Page 353
Some Notes on the Sources of Blomstrvallasaga.
By Frank Hugus.
The relatively unknown late medieval Icelandic romance, Blomstr-
vallasaga, is essentially a series of episodes which are held to-
gether by the figures of the two protagonists, EtgarS and Åki. The
author of this saga, one of the more eclectic minds in Icelandic
literary history, borrowed the majority of his characters, motifs,
and incidents from a variety of sources, primarily other Icelandic
sagas.
The main literary source of Blv is Pidrilcs saga af Bern1. Earlier
investigations have also documented the influences on and the par-
allels to Blv of Alexanders saga and Parcevals saga2. Compared to
Pidr, however, these last two works contribute little to the com-
position of Blv. The author of Blv did not always attribute the same
incidents to the same characters as did the author of Pidr, nor did
he observe the same sequence of events as the author of the latter
work. Moreover he occasionally found it expedient to alter some
of the events so that they would better correspond to the needs
of his own narrative. It is reasonable to expect that he treated ma-
terial borrowed from other sources in the same manner. This is in
faet what he did, as will be seen in the examples below.
The longer version of Qrvar-Odds saga contains passages which
are similar to three episodes in Blv. All three of the passages in
1 Altnordische Sagen und Lieder welche zum Fabelkreis des Heldenbuchs und der
Nibelungen gehoren, ed. by Friedrich Heinrich von der Hagen (Breslau: [1814]),
pp. v—vi; Blåmstrvallasaga, ed. by Theodor Mobius (Leipzig: 1855), pp. vi—vii;
Georg Lange, »Die Blomsturvallasaga und ihr VerhåltniB zur Vflkinasaga«, in Un-
tersuchungen iiber die Geschichte und das VerhåltnifS der nordischen und deutschen
Heldensage, trana. by Georg Lange (Frankfurt am Main: 1832), pp. 118-20; and
Margaret Schlauch, Romance in Iceland (London: 1934), p. 60.
2 Mobius, Blåmstrvallasaga, p. xi; Schlauch, Romance in Iceland, p. 165.