Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1981, Side 235
VII. Long Live the King!
t>at gera spakir menn, at Jjeir vilja heyra jjær fråsagnir, sem f>eim
pikki kåtligar til gamans, svå sem er Pidreks saga, Flovents saga edr
adrar riddarasogur.1
(Men who are wise wish to hear those tales which they deem amusing for
entertainment, such as Pidreks saga, Flovents saga and other tales of
chivalry.)
Not infrequently the authors of late medieval Icelandic romances saw fit
to make pronouncements concerning the literature of their day, if only to
advance the cause of their own literary activity. The author of the mid-
fourteenth-century Mågus saga, cited above, lauds the suitability of the
translated romances for entertainment. He names only two sagas; had he
expatiated, he might helpfully have listed several sagas belonging to the
matiére de Bretagne, such as Tristrams saga, Mottuls saga, and Ivens saga.
The many extant manuscripts of the Arthurian riddarasogur (see Appen-
dix V) attest their popularity - at least with those persons who commis-
sioned copies - and the number of extant copies would be larger had not
many manuscripts been lost or destroyed in the course of time.2 The
impact of the Arthurian riddarasogur in Iceland can be assessed by the
effect these translated sagas had on indigenous literature. Icelandic ac-
quaintance with the matiére de Bretagne and appreciation of it can be
substantiated by pointing to the late medieval romances that unhesita-
tingly borrowed names, settings, personalities, and even entire episodes
1 Gunnlaugur t’ordarson, ed. Bragda-Mågus saga med tilheyrandi fiåttum (Copenhagen:
Påll Sveinsson, 1858), p. 177.
2 Many manuscripts collected in Iceland were either lost in shipwrecks or destroyed by
fire (see Halldor Hermannsson, Icelandic Manuscripts, Islandica, XIX [Ithaca: Cornell
University Library, 1929], p. 50), not to mention attrition through use as well as misuse,
and other types of mishap.
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