Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1981, Blaðsíða 133
ok jjjonostu (50:13-14). Erex refuses their offer of companionship and
service, but requests instead that they go to King Arthur to relate what
had happened.
In Ivens saga a similar scene is enacted after Iven has killed the giant
Fjallsharfir (= Harpins de la Montaingne in Yvain). The giant had threat-
ened to kill four sons of a lord - in addition to the two he has already slain
- unless the father agrees to give him his only daughter in marriage. A
comparison of the sequence of events at the conclusion of the episode in
romance and saga throws further light on types of structural changes
occurring in the sagas in the interest of maintaining internal consistency
and accepted patterns. When the father makes the initial request for
help, the French Yvain responds that he will gladly expose himself to the
dangerous adventure (vv. 3944-45). Yvain succeeds in killing the giant,
and Chrétien informs us that the inhabitants of the castle beg the knight
to return to them once his next mission has been accomplished. Yvain
cannot promise anything, but requests instead that the four sons and the
daughter go to Arthur’s court and report to Sir Gawain how Yvain had
helped them. Finally, just before Yvain’s departure, the lord of the castle
graciously offers the knight his four sons as companions, but Yvain de-
clines the offer.
The corresponding episode in Ivens saga contains several changes vis-
å-vis the romance, as well as an addition. In the saga Iven specifically
agrees to undertake the dangerous task for the sake of the lord’s sons and
daughter (ch. 11, 113:4-5). At the successful conclusion of the adventure,
the father and his people want to become subject to Iven; they ask him to
remain and become their lord. When Iven replies that he cannot remain
with them, the father tries to show his gratitude by offering Iven the
companionship of his four sons and daughter. This offer of the five chil-
dren - not just of the four sons, as in the romance - balances Iven’s
expression of willingness at the outset of the episode to come to the aid of
the four sons and daughter. Only after the offer of companionship has
been made, and rejected, does Iven come forward with a counterpropo-
sal: that the four sons and daughter be sent to Sir Gawain (ch. 11, 117:10-
12). Ivens saga directly reverses the two suggested means of showing
gratitude from Yvain, that is, reporting to King Arthur and accompany-
ing the knight.
Structural extravagations, that is, from the perspective of the roman-
ces, in the Arthurian riddarasogur, can be as simple as the reversal of two
narrative units. The structural change in the scene depicting the grief-
stricken widow in Ivens saga is solely the result of a different authorial
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