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tic; the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries saw a veritable syncretism of romance
in their literature.5
The indigenous Icelandic romances carry on the tradition of the Continen-
tal literature that inspired their inception and composition. Name drop-
ping is not unknown. Sigurdar saga pogla is set å dogum Arturi hins
fræga, er réd fyrir Bretlandi, en sidan hefir England kaliat verit (‘in the
days of the famous King Arthur, who ruled over the land of the Britons,
which has since been called England’).6 This Arthur’s rule coincides with
that of a certain Flores, king of France, who had married Blankiflur. The
author divulges the source of his information; sem segir l sogu hans (‘as is
told in the saga about him’). The allusion is to Flores saga ok Blankiflur,
a translation of Floire et Blancheflor. The author of a tale about a differ-
ent Flores, Flores saga konungs ok sona hans, likewise admits his indebt-
edness to another work, namely Pidriks saga af Bern, for information
concerning one of the characters,7 and Samsons sagafagra concludes with
a reference to Skikkju saga, the tale of the mantie, which we know by its
more common title, Mottuls saga. Like Sigurdar saga pogla, the tale of
Samson the Fair, i.e., Samsons saga fagra, is set in the days of King
Arthur of England: Ar tus hét kongr er réd fyrir Englandi. Hann var rikr
ok fjolmennr ok hofdingi mikill (‘Arthur was the name of the king who
ruled over England. He was wealthy, had many retainers, and was a great
chieftain’).8 While the name - Arthur - is the same as that of the legenda-
ry king of England, the person differs. The King Arthur of Samsons saga
fagra is married to a Queen Filippia, the daughter of the King of Hunga-
ry, and from this pair the hero of the saga is descended.
Through the centuries Samsons saga fagra has been linked repeatedly
to the corpus of Arthurian sagas. For example, the codex AM 181b fol.,
written between c. 1640-50, contains Erex saga (l-6v), Samsons saga
fagra (6v-13v), and Mottuls saga (14r-17r). In the Sciagraphia Historiæ
Literariæ Islandicæ of 1777, Halfdan Einarsson lists Samsons saga fagra
among the Arthurian riddarasogur which he thought to have been trans-
lated during the reign of King Håkon Håkonarson:
5 Romance in Iceland (Princeton: Princeton University Press; New York: American
Scandinavian Foundation, 1934), p. 16.
6 Agnete Loth, ed. LMIR, II (1963), 97:1-2.
7 Drei Lygispgur, ed. Åke Lagerholm, ANSB, XVIII (Halle/Saale: Max Niemeyer,
1927), 177:15.
8 John Wilson, ed. Samsons saga fagra, STUAGNL, LXV1 (Copenhagen, 1953), 1:1-2.
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