Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1981, Page 132
this point with the younger paper manuscript, Stockholm 46. Kolbing,
the nineteenth-century editor of Ivens saga, thought that the scribe had
misread konungr (‘king’) - an abbreviation of the word may have been
used in the manuscript that was being copied - and substituted Kæi.b
Since AM 489 generally adheres to the plot of Yvain, Kolbing’s hypothe-
sis in regard to the change from konungr to Kæi is probably correct. A
scribal misreading is not the only explanation, however, for the change in
the paper manuscript. This redaction of Ivens saga is not only shorter
than that represented by the vellums, but also contains a sufficiently large
number of deviations of plot - apparently intentional - that one is justi-
fied to consider the text of this seventeenth-century manuscript a differ-
ent version of Ivens saga. The changes in Stockholm 46, vis-å-vis the
French romance, and the vellums, are thoughtful and consistent (see pp.
183-91). For that reason the transferral of function in the water-pouring
episode from Arthur to Kay may have been an attempt to restore internal
symmetry and consistency. In two previous episodes the one who had
poured the water, who had provoked the storm with its consequent de-
struction of the environment, also had to atone for the misdeed. To
restore the pattern established in the related earlier episodes, an Ice-
landic scribe either wilfully changed the names or - assuming that he was
faced with expanding an ambiguous abbreviation - chose the more rea-
sonable reading in keeping with the structure of previous analogous epi-
sodes.
A recurrent motif in the Arthurian riddarasogur is that persons who
have been aided by one of Arthur’s knights are sent to the king’s court to
give a report. This commonplace must have been considered a standard
structural component of certain types of episodes, since the authors of
some of the riddarasogur interpolate the cliché in the saga even if it is
lacking in the French source. In Erex saga, for example, parties aided by
the hero, as well as some of the vanquished opponents consistently are
sent to King Arthur’s court to relate what had happened for or to them.
Thus, after Malpirant has been defeated by Erex in the sparrow-hawk
contest, the latter sends him to the queen. Similarly, immediately after
Erex has rescued Plato, duke of Margdeiborg, from the clutches of the
flying dragon, the duke out of gratitude offers himself and all his king-
dom to Erex. The offer is enlarged upon when Plato is re-united with his
lady, as the grateful couple fail at the feet of the knight and express their
readiness to accompany him and serve him - bjddandi honum sina fylgd
6 Ivens saga, p. 54, fn. to 1. 13.
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