i i “VC” — // — : — page — # i i THE VIKING COLLECTION Studies in Northern Civilization General Editors Margaret Clunies Ross Matthew Driscoll Mats Malm Volume i i i i i i “VC” — // — : — page — # i i i i i i i i “VC” — // — : — page — # i i Geraldine Barnes THE BOOKISH RIDDARASÖGUR Writing Romance in Late Mediaeval Iceland UNIVERSITY PRESS OF SOUTHERN DENMARK 2014 i i i i i i “VC” — // — : — page — # i i © The Viking Collection and Geraldine Barnes Typesetting by Florian Grammel, Copenhagen Printed by Special-Trykkeriet Viborg a-s ISBN ---- ISSN - i i i i i i “VC” — // — : — page — # i i Contents Acknowledgments Introduction Mapping and Measuring the World: Nitida saga, Victors saga ok Blávus, Vilhjálms saga sjóðs The Boundaries of Knowledge: Dínus saga drambláta, Kirialax saga, Clári saga The March of History: Saulus saga ok Nikanors, Ectors saga, Vilhjálms saga sjóðs, Adonias saga Defending Christendom: Jarlmanns saga ok Hermanns, Kirialax saga, Saulus saga ok Nikanors, Sigurðar saga þǫgla, Rémundar saga keisarasonar Sailing to Byzantium: Dámusta saga, Jarlmanns saga ok Hermanns, Bærings saga, Kirialax saga, Sigrgarðs saga ok Valbrands, Vilhjálms saga sjóðs Conclusion – Profiling the Audience Bibliography i i i i i i “VC” — // — : — page — # i i i i i i i i “VC” — // — : — page — # i i Acknowledgments For financial support towards the undertaking of the research which led to this book, I am grateful to the Australian Research Council, and, for assistance with its publication, to a subsidy from the Australian Academy of the Humanities’ Awards Committee. A number of colleagues offered expert advice, moral support, and practical assistance along the way. Individually, my greatest debt is to Margaret Clunies Ross, for her steadfast encouragement of this project since its inception nearly a decade ago, unstinting support through its sub- sequent ups and downs, constructively critical readings of earlier drafts and passages of translation, and generous access to her personal library. The anonymous reader for the Viking Collection offered much valuable criticism and many positive suggestions. Shaun Hughes was kind enough to give me access to his not yet published manuscript ‘Clarus’ saga: trans- lation and notes,’ Keagan Brewer to material from his forthcoming book Prester John: The Sources and the Legends, and Werner Schäfke to the full text of his dissertation, Wertesysteme und Raumsemantik in den is- ländischen Märchen- und Abenteuersagas, prior to its publication while this book was in production. For providing me with copies of difficult to obtain material, I am indebted to Marianne Kalinke and John Kennedy, and to Elizabeth Bonner for a copy of her article in History. Anna Hansen, Melanie Heyworth and Gabrielle Singleton provided expert re- search assistance at various stages of the project. Invitations from Jens Eike Schnall, Werner Schäfke and Katharina Baier to the ‘Dreams of Fame and Honor: Late Medieval Icelandic Prose Fiction –’ confer- ence at Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, and from Keith Busby and Kirsten Wolf to the ‘Exploring French-Scandinavian Literary Relations in the Middle Ages’ colloquium at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, brought stimulating and congenial opportunities to exchange ideas and approaches to Icelandic romance in late . Donald Burkett provided matchless support on the home front. Matthew Driscoll and the editor- i i i i i i “VC” — // — : — page — # i i Acknowledgments ial team for the Viking Collection have overseen the publication process with remarkable patience and courteous rigour. Errors, omissions and in- felicites are entirely my own. A slightly shorter version of the Rémundar saga keisarasonar discus- sion in chapter four appeared as ‘Rémundar saga keisarasonar and the Legend of Prester John’ in The Journal of English and Germanic Philo- logy (); the analysis of Dínus saga drambláta in chapter two draws on my article ‘Cognitive Dysfunction in Dínus saga drambláta and Le Ro- man de Perceval’ in Arthuriana (); and the section on Adonias saga in chapter three will be published in a forthcoming volume arising from the ‘Dreams of Fame and Honor’ conference. The research and writing of this book was carried out during my many years as a staff member in the Department of English at the University of Sydney. i i i i i i “VC” — // — : — page — # i i Introduction In the first half of the fourteenth century, a diverse body of imaginative narratives set in Europe, Africa and Asia emerged in Iceland. Although sometimes referred to as lygisögur (‘lying sagas’), these stories usually go by the name of ‘original’ or ‘Icelandic’ riddarasögur (‘sagas of knights’) to distinguish them from the ‘translated’ riddarasögur, the Old Norse ver- sions of Old French and Anglo-Norman chivalric romances and chansons de geste produced, for the most part, at the court of the Norwegian king Hákon Hákonarson (r. –). The majority of pre-Reformation ridd- arasögur manuscripts date from the late fourteenth and early fifteenth cen- turies, and it is generally assumed that riddarasögur composition reached its height in the mid-fourteenth. The large number of riddarasögur manu- scripts which postdate the Reformation attests to their popularity well into the nineteenth century. As stories of quest, these thirty to forty narrat- ives constitute the Icelandic contribution to that body of medieval literary composition known as romance, but in the context of Icelandic saga nar- rative they remain elusive of definitive classification in terms of matter, style, ethos and setting. There is, for example, no clear demarcation of subject and mise-en-scène between episodes in some riddarasögur and the sagas set in legendary Scandinavia known as fornaldarsögur (‘sagas For a summary of views on the dating of the Icelandic riddarasögur, see Jürg Glauser, Isländische Märchensagas: Studien zur Prosaliteratur im spätmittelalterlichen Island (Basel and Frankfurt am Main: Helbing & Lichtenhahn Verlag, ), –. The earliest manuscript evidence of an indisputably ‘original’ Icelandic romance is a frag- ment of Rémundar saga keisarasonar in the fourteenth-century manuscript AM II to. For a description of this manuscript, see Christopher Sanders, ed., Bevers Saga (Reykjavík: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar á Íslandi, ), lxvii–lxviii. For a recent overview of the Icelandic riddarasögur, see Matthew Driscoll, ‘Late Prose Fiction (lygisögur)’, in A Companion to Old Norse-Icelandic Literature and Culture, ed. Rory McTurk (Oxford: Blackwell, ), –. On the popularity of romance in Iceland after the Reformation, see Matthew Driscoll, The Unwashed Children of Eve: The Production, Dissemination and Reception of Popular Literature in Post-Reformation Iceland (Enfield Lock: Hisarlik Press, ). i i i i i i “VC” — // — : — page — # i i Introduction of olden time’). Considered together, riddarasögur and fornaldarsögur form a category of Icelandic saga literature which operates in a temporal, social and geographical framework outside the experiential knowledge of its audience. Foremost among book-length studies by those relatively few scholars who have tackled the Icelandic riddarasögur as a corpus are H.G. Leach’s discussion of translated and original riddarasögur in Angevin Britain and Scandinavia (), Margaret Schlauch’s seminal overview of the field Romance in Iceland () and Einar Ól. Sveinsson’s extensive survey of riddarasögur style, motifs and interrelationships in the preface to Jónas Kristjánsson’s edition of Victors saga ok Blávus (). Jürg Glauser’s Isländische Märchensagas () examines the social milieu in which the riddarasögur corpus was produced, Marianne Kalinke has identified and analysed a substantial group of riddarasögur with bride-quests as their central motif in Bridal-Quest Romance in Medieval Iceland () and Matthew Driscoll’s The Unwashed Children of Eve: The Production, Dis- semination and Reception of Popular Literature in Post-Reformation Ice- land () investigates the legacy of the medieval riddarasögur in late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Icelandic ‘saga romance’. Although it has become something of a given that the riddarasögur are modelled on Continental chivalric romances and influenced by the ‘translated’ riddarasögur in terms of subject matter, style and ethos, that debt tends to be limited largely to the surface attributes of romance – typically, princes on quests in exotic foreign lands for brides or for the res- toration of their patrimony; combats with dragons, giants and Saracens; adventures in unknown lands which ultimately bring material rewards, noble brides and the acquisition of new kingdoms. A significant num- ber of Icelandic riddarasögur, however, owe a more overtly substantial debt to medieval encyclopaedic and historiographical traditions than their Continental counterparts. One effect of this is to bring an element of ‘bi- culturalism’ to the textual landscapes of the riddarasögur which suggests that their authors, and, by implication, their audiences, were familiar with On riddarasögur which might be classified as ‘borderline’ with fornaldarsögur, or ‘hybrid’, and on general problems in classifying late medieval saga narrative, see, for example, Marianne Kalinke, ‘Riddarasögur’, in Medieval Scandinavia: An Encylope- dia, ed. Phillip Pulsiano (New York: Garland, ), ; Driscoll , –. i i i i i i “VC” — // — : — page — # i i Introduction both learned tradition and traditional lore and accustomed to moving back and forth between them in creative literary composition. This cultural dualism is most