Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1981, Page 220
what dimwitted. The Icelandic Tristram leaves his footprints in the flour
which the Norwegian Tristram manages to circumvent by a flying leap
from his bed into the queen’s. The famous leap does exist in the Icelandic
Tristram, but in an episode separate from the flour-test, and one for
which the Icelandic author selects, distorts, and thereby renders ludi-
crous elements familiar from an analogous episode in Chrétien’s Lance-
lot. After Tristram has been removed to separate quarters because of
Morodd’s suspicions, the lovers nonetheless still enjoy their nocturnal
trysts because Tristram clambers up a rope to Isodd’s room while Mor-
odd is in church. Héri learns about the assignations between the lovers,
but when he reports to the king how matters stand, Morodd shrugs off
the situation, saying it does not matter. Nonetheless, the king is forced to
confront the latest example of infidelity because of Tristram’s ineptness.
The author relates:
Pat var eina nott at konungr for til kirkju, på hljop Tristram å
rekkjustokkinn ok stakk nibr hendinni, ok blæddi. Isodd
drottning stakk saumskærum sinum i hond sér, siban bland-
abi hon saman blobinu, til jjess at konungr vissi ekki at karl-
manns blob væri. En um morguninn frétti konungr {5vi {?ar
væri blob. (ch. 11, p. 62)
(It happened one night, when the king went to church, that Tris-
tram leapt onto the edge of the bed and jabbed his hånd and it bied.
Queen Isodd stabbed her hånd with her scissors. Then she mixed it
with his biood so that the king would not know that it was man’s
biood. And in the morning the king asked why there was biood
there.)
The above account is the result of a combination and transformation of
motifs - whether intentional, cannot be determined - known from anal-
ogous episodes in the Norwegian Tristrams saga and in Chrétien’s Lance-
lot. Both romances contain episodes in which biood in a queen’s bed is
evidence of a nocturnal visit from a lover. In the Norwegian Tristrams
saga the hero is forced to jump from his bed into Isond’s in order to avoid
leaving his footprints in the flour that has been strewn between his bed
and the queen’s. That very day the protagonists had been bied, however,
and the strenuousness of the leap causes Tristram’s wounds to re-open; as
a result, his biood stains Isond’s bed (ch. 55). In the French Lancelot the
hero gains access to the queen’s room through a window, but only after
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