Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1981, Qupperneq 60

III. Exegetes and Editors
En pvilik sannindi, sem valskan syndi mér, på norræna ek y9r
åheyrondum til gamans ok skemmtunar, svå sem virSuligr Håkon
konungr, son Håkonar konungs, baud fåkunnugleik minum at gera
nokkut gaman af pessu eptirfylgjandi efni. (Mottuls saga, p. 2)
(And this true account, which came to me in French, I translated into
Norwegian for you who are listening, for your pleasure and diversion. The
worthy King Håkon, son of King Håkon, asked me, ignorant as I am, to
present something entertaining by means of the following subject.)
A translator is identified twice in the Norwegian riddarasogur: a Brother
Robert is responsible for Tristrams saga; an Abbot Robert, for Elis saga.
Nonetheless, both references are impersonal and self-effacing. The
author-translator refers to himself as one would to another; one might
even suspect the pen of a scribe. Not so the author of Mottuls saga, cited
above, who does not divulge his name yet makes his own voice heard in a
manner uncharacteristic of saga authors. He might be addressing a cap-
tive audience: En \wilik sannindi, sem valskan syndi mér, på norræna ek
ydr åheyrondum. Such an authorial statement generates two questions
germane not only to a study of Mottuls saga but other translated sagas as
well: 1) When we speak about x-saga, can we be confident that the text of
the preserved redactions, individually or collectively, adequately reflects
the translator’s voice? In other words, are the riddarasogur as we know
them the work of the translator or the result of the combined but success-
ive efforts of a translator and one or more later copyists, be they Norwe-
gian or Icelandic? 2) What did the translator mean when he used the
word norræna in the text cited above?
The verb norræna occurs not only in Mottuls saga but also in the
prologue to the Strengleikar to describe the process of rendering Le
mantel mautaillié and a book of lais into Norwegian. Yet the word norr-
æna hardly approximates “translate” in the modern sense with its connota-
tion of fidelity to the original text; to consider the Arthurian riddarasogur
translations in the strict sense of the word is both inaccurate and mislead-
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