Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1981, Blaðsíða 111
IV. Thematic and Structural Extravagations
Å Jseirri håti'5, er heilog kirkja kallar pentecosten, en Norbmenn
kalla pikkisdaga, \>å kvåmu til Artus konungs dyrligir hofbingjar ok
konungar margra landa med hertogum ok odrum heidrsmonnum,
svå sem fæssi saga våttar, sem margar adrar, (sær sem um hann eru
gervar. (Mottuls saga, ch. 2, p. 2)
(During that festive period which Holy Church calls Pentecost, but North-
men call Pikkisdagar, there came to King Arthur excellent chieftains and
kings of many lands together with dukes and other honorable men, as this
saga bears witness, as well as many others which were composed about
him.)
During Whitsuntide the leading men of many lands converge upon King
Arthur’s court. The author of Mottuls saga vouches for the veracity of his
assertion by remarking that other sagas depict identical situations. In
faet, the author only reiterates at the beginning of the tale itself a point he
had already made in the prologue, that many sagas attest King Arthur’s
pre-eminence and the great events that took place at his court. The
reference to other tales about King Arthur bears witness to the familiari-
ty of the matiére de Bretagne in the North. Moreover, the author’s re-
course to other Arthurian tales for supporting evidence tells us something
about the character of the Arthurian riddarasogur: like their French
counterparts, the Old Norse-Icelandic romances are replete with com-
monplaces; they contain a limited number of themes recurring in varia-
tion. The cast is fairly constant, and the situations in which the Arthurian
actors play their roles do not vary mueh from saga to saga. Moreover, the
actors may substitute for one another or exchange roles. “Nothing indeed
in the romances is more bewildering, though nothing is commoner, than
to find the same adventures performed by several different persons in
different places.”1 The homogeneity of the Arthurian riddarasogur, at
1 William Henry Schofield, “The Lays of Graelent and Lanval, and the Story of Way-
land,” PM LA, XV (1900), 176.
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