Gripla - 2022, Blaðsíða 338

GRIPLA336
meaning to Seth’s role in planting the seeds which are to become the cross
on which Christ will die and thereafter be resurrected.
The combining of the Quest with the Cross material – which Barbara
Baert calls “The Seth-Wood of the Cross Motif”30– came about undoubt-
edly because of a desire to typologically connect the Fall of Man with the
redemption. That is, to link the tree of knowledge from which Adam and
Eve ate with the wood of the cross-tree and the subsequent crucifixion
of Christ on that same tree, completing the circle of corruption–
redemption.31 This widespread typology was rooted in third-century
glosses of Paul’s comments in 1 Corinthians 15:21–22 which connected
the tree of knowledge with the cross, for which a longer explicit narrative
lacked in canonical scripture.32 The seed version of the Quest combined
with the Cross material fills this gap while also strengthening the typology
that is alluded to in the canonical Bible. The seed version of the Quest–
Cross combination can be traced to a thirteenth-century Latin text, which
Meyer terms the Legenda.33 It is this Legenda material that Overgaard is
most concerned with in her 1968 edition and is also the material that forms
the source of the only version of the Quest known in Icelandic. It is thus
the Legenda from which the Quest is separated in Old Icelandic literature
when it eventually becomes a standalone tale in Sethskvæði. Material that
appears solely in this version of the Quest is the seared footsteps and the
three glimpses into Paradise.34 The development is simplified in Figure 1.
The editing practices of Mariane Overgaard give a false impression
that there is one “Legend of the True Cross” (Legenda) in Icelandic manu-
scripts, divided into subsections, as well as a number of poems which treat
the same homogenous material. This, however, is not the case, as there
is indeed much striking variation amongst the prose texts, even within
30 Baert, Heritage of the Holy Wood, 321.
31 An overview of this typology in art, both in Scandinavia and wider Europe, and its con nection
to Norse mythology is given in Annette Lassen, “The God on the Tree,” Greppaminni: Rit til
heiðurs Vésteini Ólasyni (Reykjavík: Hið íslenska bókmenntafélag, 2009), 234–40.
32 Delbert W. Russell and Tony Hunt, “Two Anglo-Norman Inedita from MS Douce
d.6,” Florilegium: The Journal of the Canadian Society of Medievalists/La revue de la Société
Canadienne des Médiévistes 24 (2008): 64.
33 W. Meyer, “Vita Adae et Evae,” Abhandlungen der philosophisch-philologischen Klasse der
königlichen bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 14.3 (1878): 185–250.
34 Both Quinn and Baert claim that the seared footsteps and three glimpses into Paradise
cannot be found elsewhere. Quinn, Quest, 108–10; Baert, Heritage of the Holy Wood, 322.