Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1981, Blaðsíða 21
tor declares that the Strengleikar are translated from a book of lais, the
collection as we know it in the one extant Norwegian manuscript corre-
sponds neither to the content nor the arrangement of the two other
extant collections of lais.15 Four of the lais have no known French origi-
nals. Thus Strengleikar is the third major compilation of lais in exist-
ence.16 There are some questions concerning the translation of the
French lais: Are the Strengleikar indeed the work of one and the same
man, as has generally been assumed in the past? Was the collection of lais
originally intended as a unified corpus of short narratives; or were the
original Strengleikar loose collections of relatively independent works
that came to be a unit only by reason of their presence in the Uppsala
codex, De la Gardie 4-7?17 Especially the latter question deserves further
consideration because of the recent discovery of another primary text of
Guiamars Ijod (the French Guigemar), the first of the Strengleikar in the
Norwegian codex. An eighteenth-century paper manuscript, Lbs. 840
4to, contains Gvlmars saga, an Icelandic copy of the Norwegian transla-
tion of Guigemar. Despite the lateness of the manuscript, the Icelandic
text preserves some readings corresponding to the French lai and not
found in the Norwegian manuscript (see pp. 49-52).
Only two of the Strengleikar are, strictly speaking, Arthurian18 - Geit-
arlauf (the title is a literal translation of Chievrefueil) and Januals Ijod
(Lanval) - and only these two Strengleikar will be considered in the study
of the Old Norse-Icelandic Matter of Britain. In addition to the Streng-
leikar collection of lais, there is the anonymous Le mantel mautaillié, also
called Lay du cort mantel, that became known in the North under the title
Mottuls saga (“The Tale of the Mantie”). As is the case with the Streng-
leikar, the preface to Mottuls saga declares that Håkon konungr, son Hå-
konar konungs commissioned the translation from French into Norwe-
gian.
The French Arthurian literature that became known in the North in
the thirteenth century thus comprises a collection of four romances (Tris-
15 See Mattias Tveitane, Om språkform og forelegg i Strengleikar (Bergen-Oslo-Tromsø:
Universitetsforlaget, 1973), pp. 46 and 53; the same, Elis saga ..., pp. 29-31; Richard
Baum, Recherches sur les æuvres attribuées å Marie de France (Heidelberg: Carl Winter,
Universitåtsverlag, 1968), pp. 124-131.
16 Tveitane, Elis saga, Strengleikar ..., p. 30.
17 Tveitane, Om språkform ..., p. 46; Povl Skårup, “Les Strengleikar et les lais qu’il
traduisent,” Les relations littéraires franco-scandinaves au Moyen Age, p. 100.
18 See Ernest Hoepffner, “The Breton lais,” Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages. A
Collaborative History. Ed. R. S. Loomis (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959), p. 117.
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