Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.2005, Page 414
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Michael Chesnutt
this rule is the Icelandic Margrétar kvæd i, which seems to have reached
Iceland directly from the Faroes.12
It should of course be taken into consideration that the Faroese Tris-
tram ballad must have been subject to a lengthy process of zersingen
before being recovered from oral tradition; it stems from a local envi-
ronment where other indisputably medieval poems survived until the
nineteenth century.13 Onomastics also adds a little to our limited know-
ledge of the diffusion of Old Norse-Icelandic romance themes in the
Faroes, for the exotic personal names Tristram, Bevus, and Mirmann
are all attested in land rolis and place-names from the fifteenth and six-
teenth centuries.14 Yet it is undeniable that Sj urbur the dragon-slayer,
Høgni, and the warriors of Karlamagnus enjoyed the greatest long-term
popularity within the Faroese ballad community. Why this should be so
we cannot tell, though in the case of FK 106 Karlamagnusar kvædi a
contributory factor may have been the wide currency of Danish printed
editions of Karl Magnus’ Krønike and Olger Danskes Krønike. It is
well known that the saga material has been contaminated with, and ex-
panded from, these Danish sources during the lifetime of the Faroese
Charlemagne cycle.15
2.
The opening stanza of Trøllini i Hornalondum would have us believe
that the Faroese ballad poet had consulted an Icelandic manuscript
source. From the historical point of view this is by no means implaus-
ible, for there are sporadic examples of traffic between Iceland and the
Faroes in the later Middle Ages. Droplaugarsona saga ch. 7 relates how
Droplaug Forgrimsdottir seils her property after the killing of her sec-
13 Vésteinn Olason, The Traditional Ballads of Iceland. Historical Studies, Rit Stofnunar
Åma Magnussonar å Islandi 22 (Reykjavlk 1982), passim; here esp. 174-79 (Margrétar
kvædi) and 213-20 (Tristrams kvædi). See also Paul Schach, “Tristan and Isolde in Scan-
dinavian Ballad and Folktale,” Scandinavian Studies 36 (1964), 281-97, here 286-87.
13 Cf. FK 140* Jolavisan, collected by Schrøter from an old woman in Fåmjin, and FK
167 Rudisar visa, collected by the same fieldworker from his housekeeper Elsebeth
Poulsdatter (1789-1859), bom in Trongisvågur.
14 Chr. Matras, Føroysk hokmentasøga (Copenhagen 1935), 21.
15 See especially Povl Skårup, “Kilderne til de færøske viser om Karl den Store,”
Frodskaparrit 15 (1966), 31-68.