This chapter provides an overview of the riddarasögur as a genre, beginning with the first transmission of romance material to Norway in the thirteenth century. It describes how this material was translated, adapted and reworked in Old Norse-Icelandic literature, giving rise to a blossoming literary tradition in Iceland which drew on the translated riddarasögur but featured a uniquely local perspective and narrative emphasis. The chapter discusses the relationship of the translated and indigenous romances to other genres within the Old Norse-Icelandic literary corpus, and argues that the romances introduced an ‘emotive script’ which offered a means of exploring concepts such as masculinity, femininity, honour and identity in a different way from existing genres. It surveys current scholarly interest in the sagas, looking in particular at their attitude to emotion, gender and agency – focusing on the so-called maiden king romances – as well as the geographic expansionism of the works, which offered their readers a vision of the world far beyond the borders of Iceland, informed by contemporary cosmographical learning.

This volume traces the reception and subsequent dissemination of the legend of Charlemagne across several Northern and Celtic-speaking realms in the Middle Ages and beyond. The geographical area spans the margins of the known medieval world in the North and North West and encompasses a broad range of languages and cultures that nevertheless share a common cultural heritage and intersecting pasts. Since 1932, when Hector and Nora Chadwick proposed the idea of a generic pan-European ‘heroic age’ beginning in the Greek classical age and spreading to the Germanic- and Celtic-speaking peoples of early medieval Britain, the Norse and Celtic worlds have been recognised as regions closely connected by geography, politics, and cultural production. Though the Chadwicks’ concept of a widespread unitary ‘heroic age’ characterised by a typology of texts and contexts has its difficulties, their comparative studies of the ‘island literatures’ of Iceland, Britain, and Ireland helped to position these vernacular literatures as a cultural matrix of sea-borne insular traditions.

While the Chadwicks assumed that this shared tradition was largely oral, more recent studies have focused on manuscripts and mobility across the communication pathways linking the north-western islands. Parallels have been found between Norse and Irish saga literature and between Welsh and Old English elegies, while the role of sea links in supporting cross-cultural influence has been at the heart of much scholarship. While earlier studies tended to assume a shared ‘heroic age’ culture, recent scholarship has focused on the transmission and reception of widely known texts in the insular world, including the Trojan legends, the stories of Alexander, and the romances of Chrétien de Troyes.

This is the context, then, in which we came to consider the transmission of the Charlemagne legends in the Norse and Celtic worlds. What is new about our book is its comprehensive account of the Charlemagne legends in Irish, Welsh, and Norse, brought together here for the first time, and our perspectives on textual criticism applied to borrowed texts with several cognates. Moving away from the Chadwickian focus on a singular literary community existing before the Norman conquest, we are interested in literary movements in the same region after the conquest, when vernacular texts began to travel more widely in a number of directions.

This chapter situates the translation process and reception of the Charlemagne material in the North in a more specific context by focusing on the Norse representation of a single figure: that of Roland, the most renowned of all of Charlemagne’s warriors. It is intended as a case study to articulate in detail the larger conceptual frameworks of transmission, adaptation, and reception of the Charlemagne material explored in the previous and subsequent chapters by focusing on the representation of the well-known Chanson de Roland in the large compilation of the chronicles of Charlemagne, Karlamagnús saga. In the Norse text, Roland’s heroic death is recounted within the narrative context of the saga of Charlemagne, indicating the perceptual framework medieval Nordic audiences had of the legendary material as a royal biography or an epic tale in the manner of the Icelandic sagas. The material of the Chanson forms the eighth þáttr (branch) of the compilation entitled Af Rúnzivals bardaga (‘Of the Battle at Roncevaux’), often referred to as Rúnzivals þáttr (‘the Roncevaux Episode’). The chapter presents an analysis of the function of the story of Roland within the narrative framework of Karlamagnús saga as well as an overview of the process of transmission and potential source materials. Finally, the chapter reveals the cultural adaptation of the figure of Roland in terms of his socio-political, behavioural, and literary function within the Nordic reading community.

The Long and Short of the Norse Roland

We do not know whether the story of Roland was translated independently or whether it formed a part of the compilation from the beginning. As with Þiðreks saga af Bern – another Old Norse compilation featuring a legendary king, Theodoric of Bern – there is no evidence to prove (or disprove, for that matter) the existence of individual branches or stories, although scholars tend to lean towards the compilation having come about in stages. The Old Norse Rúnzivals þáttr is based on a version of the Roland material that is quite close to the well-known Oxford version of Chanson de Roland, although the Digby manuscript was not the direct source.

In a well-known episode from the Middle High German epic Das Nibelungenlied, two powerful queens, Prünhilt and Kriemhilt, argue fiercely about who has the stronger, braver, and nobler husband. Both women give as good as they get in the argument, and the conflict comes to a head in a contest of social status. Kriemhilt vows to enter the church before Prünhilt – a gesture that would culturally proclaim Kriemhilt to have the higher status. Bedecked in all the splendor of her status and position, Kriemhilt haughtily passes by Prünhilt on her way into the church and says, “du hâst geschendet selbe den dînen schoenen lîp: / wie möhte mannes kebse werden immer künige wîp?” (“You have dishonored yourself and your beautiful body: how could a mistress ever become a king's wife?”). Prünhilt, indignant at the implicature quickly retorts, “Wen hâstu hie verkebset?” (“Whom do you call a mistress?”)

The Quarrel of the Queens episode contains the central turning point for the Nibelung Legend of Middle High German and Old Norse literature. In addition to the Nibelungenlied, this episode appears in three other extant texts from roughly the same period: Þiðreks saga af Bern, Völsunga saga, and Skáldskaparmál. Three of these four versions (I set aside Skáldskaparmál because it offers only an abbreviated account of the quarrel) present dialogues that reflect an intricate interplay between indirectness in speech, such as exhibited in the above verbal exchange, and directness in speech (that is, speech that requires little or no interpretation). Any study of culture and language in the medieval North ought to take into consideration this remarkable story of Sigurðr and the fateful ring. These narratives provide valuable evidence of pragmatic principles because they were clearly well known and often referenced in these regions, and thereby might reflect a widespread understanding of the scene. In addition to the several versions of the narrative considered in this chapter, there are a multitude of instances (some of which will be addressed in later chapters) in which Old Norse-Icelandic literature borrows from or alludes to the Nibelung narrative. It is, simply put, one of the best and most foundational narratives in northern Europe. Having a widely-known, multi-lingual, comparative story such as that of the story of Sigurðr and the ring is clearly an opportunity not to be ignored.

The slaying of Kjartan Óláfsson by his foster-brother and (former) loyal companion, Bolli Þorleiksson, is undoubtedly one of the most famous and moving scenes in Laxdœla saga and, indeed, all of the Icelandic family sagas. Bolli feels he has no choice but to commit the slaying, and yet he immediately feels a deep regret for having done so. After grieving thus, Bolli returns home to find his wife, Guðrún, the real agent behind Bolli’s attack on Kjartan, waiting for him. One of Bolli's men has already told Guðrún about the slaying, so when Bolli arrives, his wife is well aware of what has happened, and Bolli knows it. The exchange between the two promises to be one of the great moments of direct discourse in all of saga literature, so it is rather disconcerting that the various authors, scribes, and copyists from the medieval period to the seventeenth century cannot seem to agree on what, exactly, Guðrún says at this moment. Despite the importance this verbal exchange to the saga – or perhaps because of it – the scene has, according to Jonna Louis-Jensen, “been badly bungled in the manuscript tradition.” The principal manuscript for the saga, Möðruvallabók, appears (quite clearly) to say, “Mikil v[er]ða h[er]mdar v[er]k, ek hefi spunnit tólf álna garn, en þú hefir vegit Kjartan” (“Great are the deeds of vengeance: I have spun twelve ells of yarn, and you have killed Kjartan”). This reading, however, was unsatisfying to Einar Ól. Sveinsson, possibly due to the somewhat awkward hapax legomenon “hermdarverk,” which lead him to appeal to a much later, seventeenthcentury paper manuscript as he was editing the Íslenzk fornrit edition of the saga, producing what has become the standard reading of the line: “Misjëfn verða morginverkin; ek hefi spunnit tólf álna garn, en þú hefir vegit Kjartan” (“Unequal are the morning's labors: I have spun twelve ells of yarn, and you have killed Kjartan”). As Ólafur Halldórsson and others point out, this line is likely a variation on the proverb Drjúg eru morgunverkin (great are the morning's labors). To make matters more interesting, ÍB 225 4to, a seventeenth-century copy of the fourteenth-century Vatnshyrna manuscript, includes a variation of both phrases: “Mickel v[er]ða h[er]nað[ar] v[er]kin, en misjöfn morgen v[er] kin […].”

No comprehensive analysis of pragmatics in Old Norse-Icelandic literature would be complete without consideration of the cutting-out-the-shirt scene from Gísla saga Súrssonar, when Gísli's wife, Auðr, and sister-in-law, Ásgerðr, argue over which of them will be better at cutting out a shirt for Ásgerðr's husband (and Gísli's brother), Þorkell. The two women are working one morning in the dyngja, a part of the Icelandic homestead that would have been almost exclusively occupied by the women of the house, when, thinking themselves alone, they engage in a brief but damaging conversation: