Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.10.1979, Blaðsíða 133
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skrift af Forfatterens Concept”3. Eugen Kolbing, who edited Elis saga,
disagreed. He collated the Norwegian text of the saga with that
preserved in Icelandic manuscripts and came to the conclusion that De
la Gardie 4-7 was a somewhat corrupt copy of an older manuscript.
Since some of the readings in the Icelandic manuscript reflect better
the French text, Kolbing deemed them to be more representative of the
original translation4. Rudolf Meissner realized that to accept Kol-
bing’s thesis would be to undermine somewhat the soundness of his
own stylistic analysis of the Strengleikar, which follow the text of Elis
saga in De la Gardie 4-7. In his study Die Strengleikar, the scholar
therefore devoted considerable space to testing Kolbing’s hypothesis,
which he ultimately rejected5. At the same time Meissner conceded,
however, that it was impossible to disprove Kolbing’s theory beyond
the shadow of a doubt (p. 139). Meissner proceeded with his stylistic
analysis on the assumption that “der text der Strengleikar, abgesehen
von leicht erkennbaren fliichtigkeiten, uns in der fassung vorliegt, wie
sie der iibersetzer gegeben hatte” (p. 138). Most recently Robert Cook
and Mattias Tveitane, editors of a new edition of the Strengleikar,
argue that the very existence of some errors that bespeak haste and
carelessness, errors that were not corrected even where they lead to
contradiction within the text, “might support the suggestion ... that N
[De la Gardie 4-7] is ‘the first fair copy of the translator’s rough
draft’ ”6. Cook and Tveitane are citing Keyser and Unger.
2.
Despite absence of any Icelandic copies of the Strengleikar manu-
script, the Norwegian lais have left their imprint on Icelandic lite-
rature. Tiddels saga, for example, is an Icelandic version of Bisclaretz
3 R. Keyser and C. R. Unger, ed. Strengleikar eda Liodabok (Christiania, 1850), p.
xix. Keyser and Unger dated the manuscript to c. 1250, ibid., p. xi.
4 Elis saga ok Rosamundu. Mit Einleitung, deutscher Ubersetzung und Anmerkun-
gen (Heilbronn: Gebr. Henninger, 1881), p. xviii.
5 Rudolf Meissner, Die Strengleikar (Halle a.S.: Max Niemeyer, 1902), pp. 138-96.
6 Strengleikar. An Old Norse Translation of Twenty-one Old French Lais. Edited
from the Manuscript Uppsala De la Gardie 4-7 - AM 666b, 4°. Norsk Historisk Kjel-
deskrift-Institutt. Norrøne Tekster, nr. 3 (Oslo: Kjeldeskrift-fondet, 1979), p. xxxi. I am
grateful to Mattias Tveitane for making available to me prior to publication the proof
sheets of the Introduction to the Strengleikar, as well as the text of Guiamars Ijéd.