Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1981, Blaðsíða 253

ok skylmask e5r turnerask, en til så af borgarveggjum bæ9i
karlar ok konur. (Breta sogur, AM 573 4to, 54v)
(There were all kinds of stringed instruments, viols and fiddles,
drums and pipes, and cymphans and harps. The knights left the
castle and fenced or tilted, and from the castle walls both men and
women watched.)
The translation of some of the monuments of the French matiére de
Bretagne into Norwegian, and in turn the transmission of the Arthurian
riddarasogur by Icelandic copyists did not generate a multitude of indige-
nous continuations of the various works, as happened for instance in
France. Nonetheless, Arthurian romance enjoyed an enduring vitality in
Iceland because of its adaptability. The short Vigkæns saga kuahirdis
exemplifies both the metamorphosis of motifs and situations and the
commingling of narrative types. The successful blending of romance and
folk tale in Vigkæns saga attests the similarity of these two literary forms
and demonstrates the difficulty of delineating romance from folk tale.
Depending on one’s perspective, the success story of the cowherd who
liberates a kingdom and thereby wins the hånd of a beautiful princess can
be construed either as a folk tale with an admixture of elements from
romance, or as a romance laced liberally with folk tale motifs. Many of
the late medieval romances are just as problematic, replete as they are
with motifs and situations borrowed from a variety of literatures and
genres.35
In the course of transmission from France over Norway to Iceland,
from the thirteenth century even into modern times, the foreign roman-
ces fired the imagination of Icelanders. They borrowed - sometimes
gracing their narratives with expressions of indebtedness - and plagia-
rized, but at all times they adapted foreign material and arrived thus at a
new synthesis. Although some Icelanders deprecatingly dismissed the
indigenous romances as lygisogur, as a pack of lies, the popularity of this
literature of escape cannot be denied. Stefan Einarsson estimated the
number of extant romances - including medieval and post-Reformation
translations as well as original Icelandic compositions - to be close to
35 Concerning the problem of generic distinctions in regard to the late medieval romances,
see O. L. Jiriczek, “Zur mittelislandischen volkskunde,” pp. 3-4.
239