Rennes e CONGRÈS DE LA SOCIÉTÉ INTERNATIONALE ARTHURIENNE, 22 nd CONGRESS OF THE INTERNATIONAL ARTHURIAN SOCIETY

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1 22 e CONGRÈS DE LA SOCIÉTÉ INTERNATIONALE ARTHURIENNE, 22 nd CONGRESS OF THE INTERNATIONAL ARTHURIAN SOCIETY Rennes 2008 Actes Proceedings Réunis et publiés en ligne par Denis Hüe, Anne Delamaire et Christine Ferlampin-Acher POUR CITER CET ARTICLE, RENVOYER À L ADRESSE DU SITE : SUIVIE DE LA RÉFÉRENCE (JOUR, SESSION)

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3 Strengleikar: Past and Present The Strengleikar are a collection of chivalric romances that were translated into Old Norse from one or more collections of French poems (lais) at the instigation of King Hákon the Old of Norway, who reigned from 1217 to King Hákon commissioned the translation of works that would give his subjects insight into the magnificent world of chivalry and show them the proper way for knights to behave in the courts of kings. The Strengleikar consist of a Prologue together with twenty-one lais that were translated into prose (and therefore we might as well call them tales). The only known author is Marie de France, who has been credited with writing about half of the group (11 lais). The anonymous lais are: Desire, Tidorel, Doun, Gurun, Strandar strengleikr, Leikara lioð, Naboreis, Ricar hinn gamli, Tveggia elskanda strengleikr and Grelent. The lais that have been attributed to Marie de France are: Guiamar, Eskia, Equitan, Bisclaret, Laustik, Chetovel, Tveggja elskanda ljóð, Milun, Geitarlauf, Janual and Jonet. Four of these lais Gurun, Strandar strengleikr, Ricar hinn gamli and Tveggja elskanda strengleikr are only preserved in the Strengleikar collection and the Old Norse translation is therefore the sole witness to their existence. 1 The Prologue to the Strengleikar can be divided into two parts, the first composed by the Norwegian translator, while the latter part was composed by Marie de France. Each of them dedicates his/her work to a 1 However, there are indications that written versions of Ricar hinn gamli and Gurun once existed, see Robert Cook and Mattias Tveitane, eds. Strengleikar, pp and It is possible that both of the lais (Gorum and Le rey richard) are mentioned in a list of titles in the manuscript Shrewsbury School, MS 7 fol., p. 200 r. from about I am grateful to Keith Busby for reminding me of this possibility and providing me a copy of the list. POUR CITER CET ARTICLE, RENVOYER À L ADRESSE DU SITE : SUIVIE DE LA RÉFÉRENCE (JOUR, SESSION)

4 ACTES DU 22 e CONGRÈS DE LA SOCIÉTÉ INTERNATIONALE ARTHURIENNE, RENNES, 2008 PROCEEDINGS OF THE 22 nd CONGRESS OF THE INTERNATIONAL ARTHURIAN SOCIETY, 2008 king; the Norwegian translator to Hákon the Old as the one who instigated the work, while Marie claims to write in honour of "a courteous king". 2 It has become apparent that the Norwegian translator is a little apologetic in his introduction, which could indicate that the translation had clashed with the prevailing literary tradition in Norway until the beginning of the 13 th century; the translator seems to lay particular stress on the importance and usefulness of the translated tales. The Strengleikar are mainly preserved in one Norwegian manuscript, De la Gardie (DG) 4 7 in the Library of the University of Uppsala, Sweden. This is one of the oldest and most important compendiums of Old Norse translations of courtly literature. Originally, it consisted of 56 leaves, 14 of which are now missing, including 6 at the end of the Strengleikar. Most of the manuscript is in good condition, so this is a great loss, but there is some consolation in the fact that the manuscript collector Árni Magnússon found four of the missing leaves in 1703, in poor condition, cut to shape and sewn inside a bishop's mitre in the Episcopal seat of Skálholt in Iceland. They are now catalogued as AM 666 b 4to in the Arnamagnaean Institute in Copenhagen. 3 For a long time it was thought that DG 4 7 preserved the original Old Norse translation of Strengleikar, though Eugen Kölbing voiced doubts about this as early as the late 19th century. The American scholar Marianne E. Kalinke has now demonstrated beyond dispute that it is in fact a copy of an older manuscript. This can be seen, for example, in comparison with the late Icelandic copy (from 1737) of one of the tales from the collection, Guiamars ljóð (Gvímars saga), in Lbs to, which turned up in the 1970s. 4 This late manuscript sheds new light on the translation, since in some places it preserves readings not found in DG 4 7 but backed up by the French source, Guigemar. 5 In some ways, Gvímars saga in the Icelandic manuscript shows the translation in a more favourable light, but in other ways the two manuscripts complement each other. 2 On the Prologue, see further Sverrir Tómasson. Formálar íslenskra sagnaritara á miðöldum, pp. 58, 83 84, 110 and Mattias Tveitane. Elis saga, Strengleikar and other texts, pp The story of how it came to light is interesting: in the title in the library s manuscript catalogue, the v had been written as r, producing Grímars saga to which no one had ever given any further attention (see Marianne E. Kalinke. Gvímars saga, p. 113). 5 See Karl Warnke. Die Lais der Marie de France. PAGE 2/9

5 STRENGLEIKAR: PAST AND PRESENT AÐALHEIÐUR GUÐMUNDSDÓTTIR It is clear that Lbs to was not the first copy of Gvímars saga made in Iceland. Árni Magnússon says he acquired Gvímars saga in a paper manuscript or manuscripts, and from two catalogues compiled in late 17 th century and 1730 it may be assumed that the tale existed in Iceland in the 17 th century. There are more things that indicate that the Strengleikar collection was known in Iceland, such as a dictionary from the 17 th century, as well as motifs and material in medieval Icelandic literature and folktales. 6 The Strengleikar tell tales of knights and ladies, the tests of their love and their fate. As in other forms of chivalric literature, the male heroes are of noble birth; they are courteous, handsome and young and they have the freedom of travel and the independence of the armed hero. The women live at the opposite end of this world, kept within walled castles. Should they be unmarried they are virtually imprisoned by their fathers, and those women who do marry are likely to live in a tyrannic and loveless relationship. Usually we are informed about the circumstances of these women and the reason why they become unfaithful to their husbands or otherwise decide to take themselves a paramour. Nevertheless, it is difficult to generalize about these women; in most cases, they do not receive any notable sympathy, with the possible exception of the lady in Jonet, but on the other hand it can hardly be said that they are being condemned either. But how does the Norwegian translator succeed in transmitting these exotic tales to the Nordic people? And how did his translation interact with the prevailing literary tradition of the North? His first challenge would probably have been the form, as the French lais were composed in poetic metre, but their lyrical form had no parallel in the literary traditions that existed in the north. The traditional Northern metres, dróttkvæði and eddukvæði, simply did not suit these long narrative poems. The lais were therefore, as already mentioned, translated into prose. Usually, scholars have praised the Old Norse translation of Strengleikar. Nevertheless, it is somewhat difficult to examine it thoroughly, as the original manuscript of the translator is now lost. It is not known for certain who the translator of the Strengleikar was, and it is even possible that more than one translator was involved. 7 6 Aðalheiður Guðmundsdóttir. Strengleikar in Iceland, forthcoming. 7 Robert Cook and Mattias Tveitane, eds. Strengleikar, p. xxvi. PAGE 3/9

6 ACTES DU 22 e CONGRÈS DE LA SOCIÉTÉ INTERNATIONALE ARTHURIENNE, RENNES, 2008 PROCEEDINGS OF THE 22 nd CONGRESS OF THE INTERNATIONAL ARTHURIAN SOCIETY, 2008 The lais collection in DG 4 7 has no title, but the prologue tells us that the book may be called Ljóðabók. The tales themselves are then variously called ljóð or ljóðsöngvar, strengleikar, strengleiksljóð or strengleiks- /strengleikasögur; for this reason the editors Rudolf Keyser and Carl R. Unger named the first edition of the tales Strengleikar eða Ljóðabók. Consequently the former term became attached to the collection and now we generally speak of Strengleikar as the name of the lais from DG 4 7 and the fragment AM 666 b 4to. The edition of Keyser and Unger was printed in Christiania (now Oslo) in 1850 and contained nineteen tales together with the prologue. In the same year, the Strengleikar were also published for the common reader, when Henrik Winter-Hjelm translated the tales into Danish under the title Strenglege eller Sangenes Bog. The Norwegian Henrik Rytter then translated the tales from Old Norse into contemporary Norwegian in 1943; Kjell Venås, who revised Rytter s translation as well as commentaries, wrote an introduction to the edition and published it under the title Strengleikar eller Songbok in Later, the manuscript was edited diplomatically by Robert Cook and Mattias Tveitane in Strengleikar, Oslo, 1979, with an introduction and an English translation. The edition was designed for scholars, and is therefore, as understandable, rather inaccessible for common readers. Based on the editions that I have now mentioned, a number of people have edited single tales for Norwegian and Danish readers. In most cases these are copies of the already edited texts, although in a few cases they are independent. Two years ago, Strengleikar were edited in Iceland, in an accessible edition. Before that time, only a few of the tales had been published in an edition for the general reader, when Einar Ól. Sveinsson printed Tveggja elskanda ljóð, Laustik, Geitarlauf, Strandar strengleikr, Bisclaret and Janual in his literary collection Leit eg suður til landa in In other respects, Icelandic readers did not have the opportunity to read and enjoy the Strengleikar, and as we can see they were not familiar with 15 tales out of 21. The new edition consists of the Strengleikar collection as a whole, which is now for the first time published in contemporary orthography and prepared especially for Icelanders. The diplomatic edition by Robert Cook and Mattias Tveitane from 1979 was used as a base for the new one. In some cases, they had corrected the text when necessary, and these corrections are followed in our new PAGE 4/9

7 STRENGLEIKAR: PAST AND PRESENT AÐALHEIÐUR GUÐMUNDSDÓTTIR edition. A few new corrections have now been made, all of which are indicated in the footnotes. The commentary also points to additions and omissions in the Old Norse translation, as long as such information is likely to shed a light on the meaning of the texts. Further, some minor deviations from the French texts are mentioned, in places where it is likely to amplify the understanding of the readers or give them another view on the texts. More detailed textual comments are listed in Cook's and Tveitane's edition, where we can also find a more thorough comparison between the Norse translation and the corresponding French texts. Glossaries have been provided, which will make it easier for readers to comprehend archaic words and the language of chivalric literature. The text of the new edition has been standardized, that is, the orthography of the manuscript has been replaced by contemporary Icelandic spelling, while the Old Norse forms of words have been kept, as this not only demonstrates the special style of the translation, but also its stage of linguistic development. Along with necessary changes and commentaries, the text has been made more accessible to those who do not possess any special knowledge of the older language. A few of the tales turned out to be exceptionally difficult to edit, because of missing or badly conserved leaves. Nonetheless, they have not been left out in the new edition, but rather filled in with abstracts from existing French texts, and in such cases the additions have been marked with brackets. The abstracts, which are taken from the edition of Cook and Tveitane, have now been translated into Icelandic, and the material was then compared to the French sources. An attempt was made to translate as closely as possible in the style of the Strengleikar, and therefore the vocabulary of the Strengleikar was used to a considerable extent. The only exception from this is Tveggja elskenda strengleikr, which is, as a whole, so badly conserved that it turned out to be impossible to print it, except as a short abstract. Besides editing the Strengleikar, some scholars have written monographs about them. The German scholar Rudolf Meissner published his thorough study, Die Strengleikar: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der altnordischen Prosalitteratur, in the year 1902, and the Norwegian Marius Hægstad published his linguistic examination of the texts in Besides that, the Danish scholar Povl Skårup has published some articles, both on the collection as a whole and on individual texts; these deal a lot with the PAGE 5/9

8 ACTES DU 22 e CONGRÈS DE LA SOCIÉTÉ INTERNATIONALE ARTHURIENNE, RENNES, 2008 PROCEEDINGS OF THE 22 nd CONGRESS OF THE INTERNATIONAL ARTHURIAN SOCIETY, 2008 manuscript DG 4 7 and the translation as such. Other scholars, such as Keiser and Unger, and Cook and Tveitane, have published their researches in the introduction to their editions. Examinations of the Strengleikar or individual tales are now increasing, probably because we have here a fruitful research subject that appeals to scholars as well as to students in Old Norse. A few of the latter have made Strengleikar the topic of their dissertations in Scandinavian universities. But do the Strengleikar have any chance of appealing to others than scholars and students? I am convinced that they do, because although the lais were originally composed for French courts of the 12 th century and translated for a similar audience in Norway in the 13 th, they revolve around the same issues that people of all social stations have wrestled with for ages. They concern love and hate, marriage, infidelity, infertility, tyranny and violence. These are the little and personal problems which are seldom considered important to the ways of the world and yet, when it comes right down to it are an integral part of how the world works. It may well be presumed that these tales of relationships between sexes have long appealed to people and still do. References: Cook, Robert and Mattias Tveitane, eds. Strengleikar. An Old Norse Translation of Twenty-one Old French Lais. Norrøne tekster nr. 3. Norsk historisk kjeldeskrift-institutt, Oslo Guðmundsdóttir, Aðalheiður, ed. Strengleikar. Bókmenntafræðistofnun Háskóla Íslands, Reykjavík Guðmundsdóttir, Aðalheiður. Strengleikar in Iceland, forthcoming in the series Beiträge zur Nordischen Philologie, Zürich. Kalinke, Marianne E. Gvímars saga. Opuscula VII. Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana, vol. XXXIV, København 1979, pp Tómasson, Sverrir. Formálar íslenskra sagnaritara á miðöldum. Rannsókn bókmenntahefðar. Stofnun Árna Magnússonar, Reykjavík Tveitane, Mattias: In Elis saga, Strengleikar and other texts: Uppsala University Library Delagardieska samlingen Nos. 4 7 folio and AM 666b quarto. Ed. Eyvind Fjeld Halvorsen et al. Corpus Codicum Norvegicorum Medii PAGE 6/9

9 STRENGLEIKAR: PAST AND PRESENT AÐALHEIÐUR GUÐMUNDSDÓTTIR aevi, Quarto serie IV. Selskapet til utgivelse af gamle norske håndskrifter, Oslo Warnke, Karl: Die Lais der Marie de France. Verlag von Max Niemeyer, Halle 1925 AÐALHEIÐUR GUÐMUNDSDÓTTIR UNIVERSITY OF ICELAND / THE ÁRNI MAGNÚSSON INSTITUTE FOR ICELANDIC STUDIES PAGE 7/9