Gripla - 2023, Blaðsíða 91

89GENESIS AND PROVENANCE OF THE OLDEST SOUL
Table 36.
L (172/1581) P (136/605) B (222/611) N (286/9)
serpens
[serpent].
present
[presence].
serpent
[serpent].
ormr
[serpent].
The Flemish Connection
The possible origin and history of X, the now-lost French manuscript
source from which Viðrǿða líkams ok sálar was prepared, have been
previously discussed by Widding and Bekker-Nielsen, who advanced the
hypothesis that the Norse translator may have been a Norwegian cleric
trained in France with a good grasp of French, a rather unusual skill for
the dawn of the thirteenth century.48 As a matter of fact, Viðrǿða líkams ok
sálar represents the earliest known Norse translation of French material,
preceding the well-known Norwegian translations of French romances,
chansons de geste, and lais by at least twenty-five years. A French, rather
than an English, provenance of the text is further confirmed by the very
readings of the Norse text, which—as demonstrated above—closely mirror
the two Continental manuscripts of the French tradition, while differing
considerably from the Insular subfamily. In assessing the provenance of
the now-lost French source consulted for the composition of the Norse
text, there is reason to believe that it may have been a codex produced
in Flanders toward the end of the twelfth century. By distinguishing
Vallonian and Picardian phonetic idiosyncrasies, as well as the presence
of a Picardian calendar Calendrier français (fols. 1r–2v) transmitted in P,
Claudia Guggenbühl was able to identify Saint-Omer (Hauts-de-France)
as the scriptorium that hosted the production of P during the years 1250–
75.49 Moreover, a linguistic and orthographic survey allowed Julia Bastin
to place the preparation of B in Flanders or in the neighboring counties of
northeastern Artois or Hainaut around 1230.50
48 Widding and Bekker-Nielsen, 275–76.
49 Claudia Guggenbühl, Recherches sur la composition et la structure du ms. Arsenal 3516,
Romanica Helvetica 118 (Basel und Tübingen: A. Francke, 1998), 36–38.
50 Julia Bastin, “Trois dits du XIII siècle du ms. 9411-26 de la Bibliothèque Royale de
Belgique,” Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire 54 (1941): 467–507, at 467–69.