Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1981, Page 67

the other Arthurian riddarasogur are preserved only in Icelandic redac-
tions. The evidence provided by a comparison of the Norwegian and
Icelandic redactions of one lai with its French source has an exemplary
character, however. From the testimony of Guiamars Ijod/Gvlmars saga
we infer that the Arthurian riddarasogur suffered similar textual attrition
and corruption at the hånds of both Norwegian and Icelandic copyists, as
early as the thirteenth century and continuing into modern times.
The oldest Icelandic fragment to preserve an Arthurian text, Mottuls
saga, is the vellum AM 598 4to 1(3, a leaf that dates from around 1300.
The oldest complete text of Mottuls saga survives in two seventeenth-
century manuscripts, AM 181b fol. and AM 179 fol. These two manu-
scripts are copies of a redaction from circa 1400, however, that was at one
time part of the Stockholm 6 codex of romances. Today this codex still
contains Ivens saga, Parcevals saga, and Valvens påttr, but only frag-
ments of Mottuls saga are extant: Stockholm 6 (1 leaf) and AM 598 4to la
(1 leaf). A comparison of these two fragments that belonged originally to
the Stockholm 6 codex with the text as preserved in AM 179 shows,
however, that the text of AM 179 - transcribed when the Stockholm
codex was still intact - is an accurate copy and thus represents a text of
Mottuls saga from around 1400.
Despite the brevity of the text in the oldest fragment of Mottuls saga,
the text of AM 598 1(3 contains significant discrepancies vis-å-vis the
younger text of AM 179. A comparison of the divergent readings with the
French text reveals that the Norwegian translation of Le mantel mautail-
lié had transmitted more of the content of the French source than is
apparent from the text found in AM 179 and AM 181b, the redactions
that are the basis for Cederschiold’s edition, which in turn has been the
basis for comparative study.13 That the seventeenth-century redactions
represent a text of Mottuls saga defective by reason of reduction may
come as somewhat of a surprise, since the saga is stylistically and structur-
ally superior to the translations of the longer romances. Moreover, the
Old Norse-Icelandic text is an amplified version of the French tale be-
cause of the stylistic proclivities of either the translator or a later redac-
tor. Any deviation in the text of the paper manuscripts from the French
13 Although Cederschiold’s edition contains a fragmentary edition of AM 598 ip (pp. 36-
38) - almost the entire text can be read today by means of ultraviolet light - Halvorsen
chose to ignore in his short comparative study that portion of Mottuls saga preserved in AM
598 ip (“Le traduction scandinave des textes fran?ais,” pp. 252-53; 256-57).
5 King Arthur
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