Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1981, Page 35
literature, and a desire to make it available in Norway. Some literary
historians have suggested that the riddarasogur came into existence as the
result of a didactic ploy to hold up to the Norwegian court a “spiegel
feiner sitte und hofisch-ritterlicher lebensauffassung,”4 to present Hå-
kon’s courtiers with “Vorbilder der hofischen Sitte.”5 From this point of
view the translated romances appear to be primarily didactic documents,
and are assigned a function similar to that of later French prose roman-
ces: to instruct the nobility in the more practical ideals and duties of
chivalry by means of examples in a palatable form.6 Moreover, the point
has been made that the prefaces of some of the translations stress the
educational value of the stories.7
To attribute solely didactic considerations to Håkon’s interest in mak-
ing French literature available in the Norwegian language seems too
facile an explanation: that would mistake the nature of the translated
romances as well as the sophistication, the intelligence, and capacity for
amusement of the Norwegian court. In the case of the Arthurian riddara-
sogur, neither their content nor statements by their authors permit us to
conclude that such literature was intended primarily to instruct in chival-
ric conduct. The subject matter and tone of some of the works hardly
lend themselves to instruction in ethical behavior. Surely a queen who
attempts to seduce one of Arthur’s knights, as in Januals Ijod, is no
model of feminine deportment, and to regard Mottuls saga as an instru-
ment for instruction is to misunderstand the nature of the tale. In faet, de
Vries expressed puzzlement that the somewhat risqué FréTich tale should
ever have found favor with the king:
Was den Konig veranlaBt hat, diese hiibsche aber etwas laszive Erzåhlung seiner
hir5 zuganglich zu machen, låBt sich nicht leicht bestimmen; am Schlusse sagt der
Ubersetzer jedenfalls, daB er nicht gerne diese Keuschheitsprobe in seinem eige-
nen Lande anstellen mochte und daB man gute Weiber loben miisse. Die norwe-
gischen Sitten hatten sich wohl schon långst so sehr gelockert, daB das konigliche
Gefolge diese Saga nicht mit Entriistung aufgenommen haben wird.8
4 Rudolf Meissner, Die Strengleikar. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der altnordischen Prosa-
litteratur (Halle a. S.: Niemeyer, 1902), p. 119.
5 Jan de Vries, Altnordische Literaturgeschichte, second ed. (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1967),
II, 501.
6 Geraldine Barnes, “The riddarasogur and Medieval European Literature,” Mediaeval
Scandinavia, 8 (1975), p. 153.
7 E. F. Halvorsen, “Norwegian Court Literature in the Middle Ages,” Orkney Miscella-
ny, V (1973), p. 21.
8 Altnordische Literaturgeschichte, 2nd ed., II, 508-09.
3 King Arthur
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