Romances (East and West Norse)

Abstract

Medieval Scandinavian romances are categorized as East Norse (that is, Swedish), and West Norse (that is, Norwegian and Icelandic). The West Norse romances are of two kinds: Old Norse translations of Old French lais, romans courtois, and chansons de geste, beginning with translations in early-13th-century Norway but transmitted mostly in later Icelandic manuscripts of the 14th and subsequent centuries; and indigenous Icelandic compositions deriving from and inspired by the translations. The two types of West Norse romances are called riddarasögur (chivalric sagas), and they are categorized as either translated, also original, riddarasögur, or indigenous riddarasögur. Several Latin romances and pseudohistories are generally included among the translated riddarasögur. The earliest translation from the French is of Thomas d’Angleterre’s Tristan, called Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar. According to manuscript testimony, the romance was translated in 1226 by a certain Brother Robert at the behest of King Hákon Hákonarson of Norway (r. 1217–1263). Subsequently, Élie de Saint-Gilles, a chanson de geste, was translated by Robert, now an abbot. In the same century, anonymous translators rendered three of Chrétien de Troyes’s Arthurian romances and a collection of lays into Old Norse; all but two of these translations are known to have been commissioned by the Norwegian king. Altogether, translations of sixteen romances and twenty-two lays have been transmitted. They are distinguished in that they are prose translations of French metrical narratives. To judge by manuscript transmission, the indigenous riddarasögur are mostly 14th-century anonymous Icelandic compositions. The corpus is large, consisting of thirty-two sagas. The East Norse romances include three 14th-century metrical romances, a 15th-century prose romance, and a fragmentary 16th-century metrical romance. The three 14th-century romances are the so-called Eufemiavisor (Eufemia poems), translations of three poems of more or less direct French origin that were translated on the initiative of Queen Eufemia of Norway at the beginning of the 14th century. Unlike the West Norse romances, which were rendered in prose, the East Norse romances are in the so-called Knittelvers, a metrical form with rhyming couplets deriving ultimately from the German-language area.