Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1981, Side 233

The author displays a sense of humor as well as an understanding of the
dramatic. Kay’s lady tries on the mantie and we are left in a State of
suspense: the garment reaches the ground on either side, and the author
comments - heidarlega er skikkjan gjord (III, 26 ‘there you have a well-
made garment’). Not until the first line of the next stanza is the illusion
dashed: the back of the mantie only reaches the bend in the knee, and in
front only the lady’s navel. At the end of the Skikkju rimur the ladies
condemn the messenger in words more direct and far stronger than those
found in Mottuls saga; they ardently hope that the devil will take him (III,
71). King Arthur’s personality is also more forceful in the rimur. He
banishes the unfaithful women from his court (III, 74) - the author does
not relate, however, how the ladies react - and Arthur hits upon a novel
plan to fill the lacuna their absence creates at court: pér munud vekja
vigra-skur/vér skulum sækja oss betri frur (III, 75 ‘You are to go to war;
we will procure for us better women’). The knights agree to follow Ar-
thur’s wish in every regard. The author comments: riddara-sogurnar risa
af pvidrekkar kvomu prautir i (III, 76 ‘In that way the riddarasogur come
into being: the knights underwent hard struggles’). The well-known motif
of essaying great deeds in order to win the love of a lady is thus trans-
formed: the knights have found their ladies unworthy of them, and
through war they intend to acquire worthier lovelies. The stanza is am-
biguous: is Arthur suggesting that women are to be a victory prize?
Recall how the marriage of the eponymous hero of the Icelandic Tris-
trams saga comes about (see p. 210). Moreover, the author of the Skikkju
rimur seems to intimate that the great deeds of which the romances tell
are an indirect consequence of the infidelity of women, that occasioned
their banishment from Arthur’s court.
When Brother Robert set his name and the date 1226 to the translation
of Thomas’ Tristan, it probably never occurred to him what impact his
translation as well as that of other romances would have on the develop-
ment of literature in Iceland.27 Nor could King Håkon Håkonarson, his
royal patron, have realized that repercussions from the contemporary
French literature he introduced at the Norwegian court would still be felt
centuries later - not in his own country, but in Iceland. Not only were
Icelanders ardent copyists, they also displayed adroitness at giving the
old a new twist. At the same time that they preserved for us the medieval
literature of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, they also tried their own
27 See Paul Schach, “Some Observations on the Influence of Tristrams saga ok Isondar on
Old Icelandic Literature,” pp. 81-129.
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