Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series B - 01.10.1983, Blaðsíða 21

XIX
most significant of these innovations is the fact that
the instrument which the hero brings from his home
in order to expose his hitherto unseen mistress is
not a (magic) lamp as in Y and the Spanish version
but a steinn14 (Partal.) or a gold ring with a stone
(P&K).15
In fact, the assumption of a Norwegian courtly
translation of Partonopeus de Blois rests solely on an
analogy with other French courtly literature that is
known, or in some cases assumed, to have come to
Scandinavia via Hákon Hákonsson’s court and to
have spread from there both to Iceland16 and,
through the medium of the Eufemiavisor, to Sweden
and Denmark. Thus, the Danish poem of Flores og
Blanseflor is a translation of one of the Eufemiavisor,
which in its turn is derived from Flóres saga ok
Blankiflúr, a Norse prose version of the French verse
14 The manuscripts of the *Ab-group have the reading ‘náttúru-
steinn’ but this must be secondary. For náttúrusteinar see Alfrœði
íslenzk I, ed. Kr. Kálund, STUAGNL (Copenhagen, 1908), pp. 77-
83. Such magic stones make frequent appearances in the riddara-
sogur, see M. Schlauch, Romance in lceland (London, 1934), pp. 42,
43, 52, 76, 136, 146. Note that an Icelandic folktale based on the
motif Aa 425 also makes use of a steinn instead of a lamp (‘Sigurður
kóngsson’, íslenzkar þjóðsögur og œfintyri, safnað hefur Jón Arnason,
n, eds. Árni Böðvarsson and Bjarni Vilhjálmsson, Reykjavík 1954,
pp. 325 ff.)
15 Trampe Bodtker (op. cit., pp. 44-45) considers that the stone
in the common source of the two Nordic versions must also have
been set in a finger-ring. He thinks that this feature has ‘l’air d’étre
plutot due á un remanieur qu’au traducteur lui-méme’. In this way
a new intermediate link is introduced! This view too, however, rests
on Trampe Bodtker’s preconceived opinion that Partal. derives
from a Norwegian translation. The royal Norwegian court trans-
lators ‘pouvaient abréger les romans, les priver de leurs ornements
artistiques, sans toucher á la charpente’ (ibid.).
16 The most recent survey is Marianne E. Kalinke, King Arthur,
North-by-Northwest, BiblAM XXXVH (1981).