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from Pidriks saga the pattern of having each robber speak, while also
borrowing some of the phraseology. The two interpolated episodes are
by no means incompatible with the author’s leaning to terseness. Stylisti-
cally they are of one mold with the rest of the saga. Structural and
aesthetic considerations led, however, to the inclusion of the flying dra-
gon episode and of Erex’ encounter with seven armed men, despite the
laconic character of the work as a whole. The two interpolated episodes
are an integral part of a triad of adventures (the third is the adventure
with the two giants) in which Erex aids others. These three adventures
are a necessary complement to three earlier adventures in which Erex has
to fight in order to protect himself, his wife, and his possessions.11 The
idea for an episode in which the hero batties a beast could have come
from Tristrams saga or from Ivens saga, but the content itself comes di-
rectly from Pidriks saga. The source of the second interpolated adven-
ture is unknown, but it is not unlikely that the author himself created the
episode by fusing material from two earlier episodes in the saga: the ad-
ventures with the eight robbers and with the two giants.12 Erex saga is a
successful and complete re-creation of a tale, whereas the Stockholm 46
version of Ivens saga is marred by inconsistencies - in style, in reduction
of text, and in narrative and structural modifications (see pp. 92-96).
Nonetheless, the text of Ivens saga, Stockholm 46, is the intermediate
step between translation and re-creation, and proof that Icelandic redac-
tors revised as well as copied.
In Erex saga we confront a structural re-creation and rather extensive
modification of a tale. Nonetheless, the Arthurian romance is still recog-
nizable with its courtly spirit, albeit tempered by the saga’s greater real-
ism and approximation to behavioral norms of the North. The spirit of
Arthurian chivalry is still in evidence, however, and is taken seriously by
the author; we are still in the world of the roman courtois. The case is
otherwise with the Icelandic Saga af Tristram ok Isodd, which Henry
Goddard Leach dismissed half a century ago as a “boorish account of
Tristram’s noble passion.”13 Although the essential elements of Thomas’
Tristan are recognizable in the Icelandic Tristram, there are nonetheless
so many modifications as well as additions in the Icelandic version that
Einar Ol. Sveinsson declared, “the subject is ruined in the handling and
the story disfigured by the introduction of personal names from hither
u See Kalinke, “The Structure ot the Erex saga," p. 350.
12 See Foster W. Blaisdell, “The Composition ot the Interpolated Chapter in the Erex
Saga," SS, 36 (1964), p. 124.
13 Angevin Britain and Scandinavia, p. 186.
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