Found in Translation: Itinerant French Epics in Medieval Scandinavia

Found in Translation: Itinerant French Epics in Medieval Scandinavia contains English translations of three Old Norse-Icelandic renderings of French chansons de geste: Elis saga ok Rosamundu, Bevers saga, and Flovents saga, as well as Baerings saga, an Icelandic chivalric romance. Unlike the courtly romances, such as the Arthurian narratives of Chretien de Troyes, the French epics were anonymous; the earliest is the eleventh-century Chanson de Roland (Song of Roland), dated to around 1100. The epic poems were recited by jongleurs, itinerant storytellers, who performed, for example, at markets on feast days in exchange for payment. The French epics translated into Old Norse-Icelandic were composed a couple of centuries later, under the influence of courtly romance, and are commonly designated ＂romance epics.＂ They introduced the motif of the love of a beautiful Saracen maiden, la bele Sarrasine, for a Christian knight in Scandinavia. The romance epics are anonymous, unattributed narratives, which were subject to revision and to recreation. Each epic, Elie de Saint-Gilles, Boeve de Haumtone, and Floovant, has been transmitted in only one manuscript. Comparison of the Old Norse-Icelandic translations with the French epics reveals that the translations are renderings of variant versions of these narratives. At times the translations provide more information or less than the French epics; leave out entire passages or figures; or add new matter and conflicting facts. These translations resulted in the creation of a new Icelandic genre, the riddarasaga (pl. riddarasogur), or chivalric saga. Found in the oldest manuscript containing translations of French epics, Baerings saga stands at the head of this tradition, the first riddarasaga and a thoroughly original Icelandic narrative, despite a plot heavily indebted to Bevers saga.

Marianne Kalinke is Center for Advanced Study Professor Emerita of Germanic Languages and Comparative Literature at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She is the editor of and a contributor to The Arthur of the North: The Arthurian Legend in the Norse and Rus’ Realms (2011) and of Norse Romance II: The Knights of the Round Table (1999), as well as editor and translator of Mottuls saga, Ivens saga, and Erex saga in that volume; and author of Stories Set Forth with Fair Words: The Evolution of Medieval Romance in Iceland (2017). With Kirsten Wolf she is co-author and translator of Pious Fictions and Pseudo-Saints in the Late Middle Ages (2023), also published by the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies.