Ála flekks saga: An Introduction, Text and Translation

• Main Authors: Hui, Jonathan YH, Ellis, Caitlin, McIntosh, James, Olley, Katherine, Norman, William, Anderson, Kimberly
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: University of Leeds 2019
• Subjects: Norway; Tristan; Chevalier; Iceland
• Online Access: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/291483; https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.38645

The Old Norse riddarasögur (‘sagas of knights’) were one of the most popular genres of saga literature in Iceland down the centuries, as demonstrated by the extant manuscript evidence. The corpus encompasses a diverse array of texts which can be positioned along a scale spanning from reworkings of texts from continental Europe to original compositions which more closely resemble the native saga tradition. On the one hand, the early Norwegian translations of texts from the Continent seem to have been translated in the court of King Hákon Hákonarson, who ruled Norway from 1217 to 1263. These include the romances Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar (translated from Thomas of Britain’s Tristan), Elis saga ok Rósamundu (Elie de Saint-Gilles), Parcevals saga (Chrétien de Troyes’ Le Conte du Graal), Ívens saga (Chrétien’s Le Chevalier au Lion) and Erex saga (Chrétien’s Erec et Enide), as well as Möttuls saga (Le mantel mautaillé) and the Strengleikar (Marie de France’s lais). Old Norse translations of many other diverse texts, from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae (Breta sögur) to the elegiac comedy Pamphilus de amore (Pamphilus saga ok Galatheu), are now also classified by scholars as riddarasögur.