Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1981, Page 113
rather his ingenuity: he resorts to his fiddle and to trickery in order to
rescue Isond.
The abduction of another queen - also the victim of a rash promise - is
mentioned twice in Ivens saga. The two references in the saga to the
abduction of Guinevere are based on Yvain but derive ultimately from
one of Chrétien’s other romances, his Lancelot. Here, as in the Tristan
tale, a knight appears one day with an absurd demand of King Arthur.
The visitor challenges the king to allow one of his knights to engage in a
duel with him. The stakes are high: the queen is to be the prize. If a
knight accepts the challenge and overcomes Meleagant, as the stranger is
called, the latter promises to release all of Arthur’s men whom he has
captured at one time or another. The privilege of fighting for the queen
and for the return of the captives falis to Kay. Arthur’s steward loses,
however, and the hero of the romance, Lancelot - who, like Tristram,
had been absent from court at the time the incident took place - sets out
on the long and arduous task of winning Guinevere back again. The vari-
ous traits we know from Tristan are present in Chrétien’s Lancelot - a
weak king who makes a hasty promise, an abducted queen, and her
eventual delivery by her lover - and consequently direct influence of
Thomas’ Tristan on the romance of Lancelot has been postulated.2 The
allusion in Yvain to a major episode in another romance would have
pleased an audience familiar with Chrétien’s æuvre, but in the North the
cryptic cross-reference probably occasioned puzzlement.3 The allusions
in Ivens saga - as vague as they are - to the abduction of the queen, have
a function, however: they explain Gawain’s absence from Arthur’s court
when his help is needed (108:8-9; 112:9-113:2) and permit the inclusion of
derogatory remarks regarding Kay, King Arthur’s steward. The author,
through one of his characters, gently censures the queen who had been
foolish enough to entrust herself to a knight of Kay’s questionable ca-
libre.
Only Tristrams saga contains a fully developed abduction episode that
2 See Stefan Hofer, Chrétien de Troyes. Leben und Werke des altfranzdsischen Epikers
(Graz-Koln: Hermann Bohlaus Nachf., 1954), pp. 133-36.
3 There is no evidence that Chrétien’s Lancelot was translated into Norwegian, yet some
familiarity with the knight is attested in the North. Breta sogur (Hauksbåk, 289:1-3) lists
Lancelot together with Valvein and Yvain as King Arthur’s nephews. The author of Ivens
saga substitutes the name Lancelot for Dodinez (Yvain, v. 54) as one of the knights who
listens to Kalebrant’s tale. In Rémundar saga keisarasonar the epithet of the eponymous
hero - hinn kranki kerrumadr (‘the sick man of the cart’) - is reminiscent of Lancelot’s
cognomen, Le chevalier de la charrette.
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