Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1981, Page 23

that the tragic love tale evolved into a parody (see pp. 198-211). The
primary formal difference between the French Arthurian matter and its
Northern manifestations resides in the change from verse to prose. The
French rhymed metrical romances and lais were transformed into the
traditional prose sagas of the North. Nonetheless, the essence of both
Tristrams saga and Mottuls saga was also re-created by Icelanders in
verse, in two original compositions dating from the fifteenth century, in
the ballad Tristrams kvædi ‘The Poem of Tristram’ and in the lengthy
narrative poem Skikkju rimur ‘Mantie Verses’ (see pp. 214-19). In addi-
tion to inspiring original adaptations, the translated Arthurian romances
also became a favorite source for later Icelandic authors, especially of the
fourteenth century. The late medieval Icelandic romances freely borrow
from the Arthurian cornucopia of names, characters, motifs, and situa-
tions (see ch. VII).
The Old Norse-Icelandic translations of foreign literature are generally
designated by the term riddarasogur - that is, tales of knights or chivalric
tales. The designation is not exact because it embraces foreign works of
diverse form, content, and language. Not only translations of romans
courtois - the chivalric romances properly speaking - are called riddara-
sogur, but also the Northern versions of the chansons de geste. The term
includes not only the matiére de Bretagne and the matiére de France but
also the Matter of Antiquity, such as Alexanders saga, a prose translation
of the Latin epic poem Alexandreis by Gautier de Chåtillon. Latin histo-
riographical works in prose, such as Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia
regum Britanniae (Breta sogur) are also subsumed under the seemingly
all-inclusive term riddarasogur, which furthermore can also include the
indigenous Icelandic romances, that is, late medieval imitations of the
Norwegian translations.2" Considering the diversity of the works repre-
sented by the term riddarasogur, a more descriptive designation for the
translated literature is fornsogur sudrlanda. This term, coined almost a
hundred years ago by Gustaf Cederschiold as title for an edition of ro-
mances, both translated and indigenous, has been adopted by some schol-
ars.21 Fornsogur sudrlanda, tales of ancient days set in the Southland,
For a discussion of terminology, see especially E. F. Halvorsen, ''Riddersagaer,”
KLNM, XIV, 175-183; Klaus Rossenbeck, Die Stellung der Riddarasogur in der altnordi-
schen Prosaliteratur - eine Untersuchung an Hånd des Erzåhlstils. Diss. Johann Wolfgang
Goethe-Universitåt, Frankfurt am Main (Bamberg: Rudolf Rodenbusch, 1970), pp. 25-46.
21 Fornsogur Sudrlanda, Lunds Universitets Årsskrift, XVIII (Lund, 1884). The term
fornsogur sudrlanda appears also in an edition of Trdjumanna saga and Breta sogur by Jon
9