Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1981, Blaðsíða 41
gave a retort with which there is no argument: Nu verdr hvårki pat né
annat gert eptir allra hugpokka, pvlat engi parf trunad å slikt at leggja
nema vili (‘Now it is impossible to piease everybody, and no one needs to
believe such things if he does not wish to’).25 Since the fanciful nature of
the indigenous romances was clearly recognized, they came to be called
lygisogur, ‘lying sagas,’ a derogatory term that did not sit well with the
authors of the maligned narratives, who attributed criticism of the subject
matter to a lack of imagination. They chided audiences for the inability to
envisage the extraordinary feats of those endowed with great strength
and in possession of excellent weapons.26 Listeners who found fault with
the subject matter and considered it all prevarication were informed that
they simply were not in possession of the truth, that they were unwilling
to believe of others what they themselves could or would not dåre.27 One
author even went so far as to assert that the accuracy of the information
disseminated in the romances did not really matter, if ignorant folk made
up the audience, since they would not be able to detect all the errors an
expert might discover.2X The tradition of considering entertainment as a
primary function of romance was maintained even by the copyists. As
late as 1696 the title page of a manuscript containing some of the Arthuri-
an riddarasogur proclaims that the sagas had been copied til frodleiks ok
skemmtunar (‘for information and pleasure’).29
In light of the foregoing, one can postulate a tradition in Old Norse-
Icelandic literature of amusement as motivation and objective for the
creation of romance. To be sure, the recurrent assertions that the transla-
tion or composition of a work was undertaken til gamans ok skemmtanar
sound like clichés, and indeed they are. Nonetheless, this very topos
betrays a certain attitude towards the imported fiction. When King Hå-
kon Håkonarson welcomed Arthurian literature to his court in the form
of translations from the French, he must have been aware of the popular-
ity of the romans courtois in France and England. Those didactic consid-
erations that entered into an extensive program of translation surely
hinged less upon the thought that the content of the romances might be
useful for instruction, than upon the realization that their content provid-
ed entertainment at the prestigious courts of Europe. The Arthurian
25 Sigurdar saga pogla, 96:8-10.
26 Flores saga konungs ok sona hans, 122:1-5.
27 Pidriks saga af Bern, I, 6:24-7:12; similarly, Vilhjålms saga sjods, LMIR, IV, 4:4-9.
28 Vilhjålms saga sjods, LMIR, IV, 3:8-4:4.
29 BL Add. 4859.
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