Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1981, Qupperneq 31

completely to rework a tale, and interpolate new episodes either original
or borrowed from other sagas. Consequently, for the comparatist the
manuscript situation of the Icelandic Arthurian romances poses some
difficulties. Not onty seventeenth-century scribes but earlier copyists as
well took considerable liberties with texts. To understand the evolution
of Icelandic romance, access to the manuscripts themselves is a sine qua
non. Moreover, any comparative study of the Norwegian translations of
French romances preserved in Icelandic manuscripts must be predicated
on the assumption that the extant manuscripts reflect the original transla-
tions only in an imperfect manner (see pp. 74-75).
We are indebted to the scholars of the nineteenth century - Gisli
Brynjulfsson (Tristrams saga, Mottuls saga, Saga af Tristram ok Isodd),
Cederschiold (Er ex saga and Mottuls saga), Kolbing (Ivens saga, Parce-
vals saga, Valvens påttr, Tristrams saga) and Keyser and Unger (Streng-
leikar) - for bringing the Arthurian riddarasogur to the attention of me-
dievalists through pioneering editions, and for establishing convincingly
the French sources of the Scandinavian romances. Reliance solely on
their editions and on studies based on these editions can, however, lead
to erroneous conclusions and give a false impression of the nature of the
riddarasogur. Without intending to denigrate the work of earlier schol-
ars, we should nonetheless keep in mind that their editions often do not
meet modern critical standards. Nineteenth-century editors were not al-
ways able to examine all the manuscripts and sometimes had to rely on
the services of others;42 they seldom deemed it necessary to take into
consideration some of the later paper manuscripts, which were dismissed
as worthless. Thus, Kolbing ignored Stockholm 46, a paper manuscript of
Ivens saga, although it has subsequently proven to be one of the primary
manuscripts of that romance.43 In his review of Kolbing’s edition of Ridd-
arasogur, Cederschiold suggested the advisability of preserving medieval
texts either in photo-reproductions or in diplomatic editions, and posed a
thought-provoking question: “Man setze nur den Fali voraus, da(3 der Cod.
Holm. 6, 4to gleich nachdem die Ausgabe von K[olbing] erschien, auf
irgend eine Weise der Zerstorung heimgefallen ware! Konnte wohl die
Ausgabe einem Grammatiker, Lexikographen, Textkritiker flir die ver-
42 For example, Kolbing himself did not have access to manuscripts in the British Muse-
um (Riddarasogur [Strassburg: Triibner, 1872], p. IV and XI).
43 Kolbing, Riddarasogur, pp. IX-XI. Regarding the Add. 4857 manuscript of Parcevals
saga in the British Museum. Kolbing declares: “Diese Handschrift ist hochst wahrscheinlich
eine werthlose Abschrift der Membrane" (p. IV).
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