Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1981, Page 197
readily impressed as is her father by Olafs accomplishments, and delays
the proceedings considerably. Only after she herself has met Olaf and
conversed with him in the course of an entire day, does she leave the
matter in her father’s hånds - the equivalent of agreeing to the marriage.
The changes in both Ivens saga and Erex saga discussed above seem to
reflect the author’s concern with proper or acceptable behavior in accord-
ance with Scandinavian customs and religious as well as legal codes. A
thorny issue arises here. Throughout this study the word “author” has
been used intentionally to signify the Creative spirit responsible for the
content and style of the sagas as known from extant manusripts. We
again confront the question raised in chapter III regarding the nature of
the Arthurian riddarasogur: how accurately do extant Icelandic manu-
scripts reflect the original Norwegian translations? A textual comparison
of extant manuscripts of any one saga with the French source produces
paradoxical evidence regarding Icelandic scribal practices: in one and the
same manuscript one comes upon some passages that transmit the French
matter verse for verse - and therefore they certainly represent the text of
the Norwegian translation - but one encounters other passages that mani-
fest substantial editing, particularly in condensing the text, as well as
Creative revision through modification of content and structure (see pp.
88-92). Especially the Stockholm 46 redaction of Ivens saga offers
evidence that early in the transmission process some Icelandic copyists
not only condensed the Norwegian translations they were supposed to be
transcribing, but also tampered with their content. The Stockholm 46
version is a vital link in an evolutionary process with five basic stages:
French romance - Norwegian translation - Norwegian/Icelandic copy -
Norwegian/Icelandic revision - Icelandic re-creation. The third and
fourth stages do not necessarily represent separate stages, since one re-
daction may contain a combination of characteristics associated with ei-
ther stage: textual corruption, orthographic changes, lexical substitution,
syntactic and minor stylistic modifications on the one hånd, and substan-
tial modifications of content and structure on the other. By comparing
the text of the Stockholm 46 manuscript of Ivens saga with that of the
vellums and with the text of Chrétien’s Yvain, we can conclude that
Icelandic redactors and not the Norwegian translators were responsible
for some of the changes in the riddarasogur vis-å-vis their sources. For
that reason the Stockholm 46 manuscript clarifies considerably the posi-
tion of Erex saga among the translated Arthurian romances.
In the tale of Yvain/Iven, the hero kills the lord of the spring and
subsequently marries “die leicht getrostete Witwe,” as Wendelin Foer-
13*
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