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Queens and Bodies: The Norwegian Translated lais and Hákon IV’s Kinswomen
Abstract
Among the texts translated from Anglo-Norman or French into Old Norse at the behest of Hákon IV Hákonarson (1217–63) were the Strengleikar, a group of lais including those attributed to Marie de France, and Möttuls saga (The Saga of the Cloak), the translation of Le lai du cort mantel, which also has an Icelandic rímurversion, Skikkjurímur.1 Both Strengleikar and Möttuls saga were translated in Bergen in the early to mid-thirteenth century as part of the king’s program of translating courtly literature.2 Hákon’s aim of centralizing political power in Norway, transforming old warrior-based, regional and autonomous power bases into a medieval European feudal state whose ideological center was the royal court, was underpinned by the promotion of European Arthurian literature in which a powerful king adjudicated honor and status in a world-famous court.3 In addition to the larger work of centralization, Hákon’s medium-term political tasks were: first, securing his claim to the Norwegian throne as the illegitimate and posthumous son of king Hákon Sverrison; second, achieving sole rule over Norway after years of power-sharing with his kinsman, jarl, later hertogi (duke) Skúli; third, assuring the succession; fourth and last, cementing important diplomatic links with other royal European houses. These included his immediate neighbors in Sweden and Denmark, but he also had contacts with England, France, the Holy Roman Empire, the Vatican, and, as discussed below, with Spain.4 Each of these four projects was guaranteed to some degree by the bodies of royal women: specifically those of his mother, his wife, and, to a lesser extent, his daughters-in-law and his daughter. The important female kindred of Hákon were: his mother, Inga of Varteigr; his wife, Margrét Skúladóttir, and his only legitimate daughter, Kristín Hákonardóttir. Other influential female figures in Hákonar saga Hákonarsonar, the biography of the king, commissioned by his son Magnús, and composed by the Icelander Sturla Þórðarson in the 1260s, were Ingiríðr Skúladóttir, Margrét’s sister; Ragnhildr, Skúli’s wife and Hákon’s mother-in-law; and the Swedish granddaughter of king Eric the Saint, frú Kristín, wife of Hákon galinn, Skúli’s half-brother, who was the mother of Knútr Hákonarson.5
The Strengleikar collection includes two lais attributed to Marie de France which deal with Arthurian material: Geitarlauf and Januals ljóð, versions of the Anglo-Norman Chevrefueil and Lanval; both these lais feature adulterous queens: Isolt and Arthur’s unnamed queen. Möttuls saga is a chastity-test tale that attributes sexual misbehavior not only to Arthur’s queen, but to every lady—bar one—at the Arthurian court.6 Marianne Kalinke has suggested, following Cederschiöld, that Möttuls saga, which fails to recognize the names of some major Arthurian figures including Yvain and Perceval, is among the earliest of the texts translated for Hákon’s court.7 Whether or not this is the case, this group of stories imported from the sophisticated south raise three related questions. What might Hákon’s court, the likely original audience of the translations, have made of the accounts of the irredeemably sexually-compromised queen and court? How did the imported models chime with, or contrast with, available native literary, historical, and contemporary models of queenship? And what impact did the chivalric material have on the historiography written at the court of Hákon’s son, Magnús, who commissioned his father’s biography? These are the questions that this essay seeks to investigate, to try to flesh out the reception context of these lais in the Norwegian milieu.
As Janet Nelson has observed, in comparison with medieval kingship, medieval queenship was ill-defined.8 The role changed considerably between the early medieval period and the twelfth century, when the original poems were composed, and the thirteenth century when they arrived at Hákon’s court. Where Merovingian and early Anglo-Saxon queens had fulfilled distinct roles, often co-witnessing documents, offering advice to the king...
... Today, queenship is a prominent thematic strand at conferences and queenship scholars advise doctoral students. Library shelves are lined with studies on individual queens as partners of the king, mothers, political actors, intercessors, and patrons in Iberia (Bianchini, 2012;Earenfight, 2010;Echevarria, 2002;Martin, 2006;North, 2015;Rodrigues, 2009;Santos Silva, 2010;Silleras-Fernández, 2008;Woodacre, 2013a), Germany (Fößel, 2009;Jasperse, 2014;Nash, 2015;Nelson, 1978;Scheck, 2009), France (Adams, 2010;Grant, 2016;Rohr, 2016), Italy (Casteen, 2011;Clear, 2004), England (Hicks, 2011;Laynesmith, 2004;Mudan-Finn, 2012;Okerlund, 2009;Slater, 2012;Turner, 2008;Klein 2006), Scotland (Comba, 2014;Downey, 2006), Ireland (Edel, 2002;Preston-Matto, 2010), Scandinavia (Etting, 2004;Larrington, 2009;Layher, 2010), the Byzantine Empire (Brubaker & Tobler, 2000;Herrin, 2001;James, 2001;Karagianni, 2013;Kotsis, 2012a, b;Kotsis, 2016;Martin, 2008), and central and eastern Europe (Adamska, 2013;Mikó 2006;Zajac, 2016). ...
This essay surveys new identities and frameworks for the study of medieval queens that have emerged over the past 30 years and argues that the study of queens and the practice of queenship has transformed the study of monarchy. Queenship is understood by most scholars to be a cluster of customs, practices, and political theory that focuses on who queens were and what they did; how they were perceived by their peers; and how they were vital to family, culture, religion, and economics in the European Middle Ages. Empirical research on queens and empresses cuts across time and space and is grounded in feminist theory and methods; it rejects traditional masculine-centered political history in favor of a nuanced understanding of women and power.
Medieval translations can be a shaping force in emerging vernacular literatures, as Marie de France’s Fresne and its Old Norse and Middle English translations demonstrate. While Sif Ríkharðsdóttir highlights that each version is adapted to its target literature, these texts also draw on the cultural authority of translatio studii to legitimize innovation. This article traces each text’s influence using Itamar Even-Zohar’s polysystem theory, having determined their position within the literary polysystem through textual and manuscript contexts. Each version constructs its own cultural authority to reshape the polysystem for different ideological purposes, thus producing texts that differ both from their source material and the norms of their target literatures. This is most apparent in their representations of courtliness: by invoking translatio studii, the Anglo-Norman Fresne establishes an exemplar of sincere interiority-based courtesy, whereas the Old Norse Eskia instrumentalizes French prestige to legitimize a performative ideal of courtliness in Norwegian literature. Conversely, the Middle English Lay le Freine uses translatio to reinvent its genre as the socially inclusive Middle English Breton lay, where courtliness is primarily a literary effect. Intervernacular translations therefore emerge as a key source of innovation in vernacular polysystems, pointing towards a new approach to comparative medieval literature.
Ólafs saga helga, the middle part of the compilation of kings’ sagas known as Heimskringla, contains an episode commonly referred to as Fridgerdarsaga, relating a dispute between the kings Óláfr Haraldsson of Norway and Óláfr sænski “the Swede” Eirίksson of Sweden; this episode has been described by Lars Lönnroth as a narrative that “centers upon some of the most fundamental problems of medieval government and kingship.”1 The episode is indeed fundamental to the text’s subtle portrayal of power politics and involves several key characters: the Icelander Hjalti Skeggjason, the two kings, equally ambitious but unlike in character, the Swedish jarl “earl” Rognvaldr, and three aristocratic women: Ingibjorg Tryggvadόttir, Princess Ingigerðr, and her illegitimate half-sister Ástriðr, daughters of Óláfr sænski. Before the culmination of the episode, the dramatic confrontation between þorgnýr logmaðr “law-man” and King Óláfr sænski at the Uppsala assembly, there is a long prelude with a relatively large involvement of women that has been surprisingly neglected by scholars.2 This part of the story is characterized by delicate and covert efforts to settle the dispute through diplomatic means; these efforts are mainly on the part of Hjalti Skeggjason and Ingigerðr Óláfsdόttir, but with significant contributions from Rognvaldr jarl and, especially, his wife, Ingibjorg, who holds a personal grudge against Óláfr sænski. The aftermath of the dispute is dramatic as well: in some narrative traditions (i.e., the Separate Saga of St. Óláfr as well as the Legendary Saga) , Ástriðr Óláfsdόttir travels to Norway, meets King Óláfr and boldly offers herself to him in marriage.3
Gender is one of the most fraught topics in Old Norse-Icelandic literature, and medieval authors made productive use of laughter and humor, inviting the audience to laugh with, or at, their characters, based on how good or unsuccessful they are at fulfilling ideal male or female roles.1 Sagas and eddic poetry are noted for brave heroes who die with a sarcastic remark on their lips, and formidable women who coldly laugh as they demand that someone be killed. These characters are likely to ref lect a society preoccupied by honor and the heroic ethic. In sagas inspired by romance, where women’s independence is the central theme, laughter becomes a weapon in the battle of the sexes, and instead of men laughing at other men, they join ranks to laugh at women. This article examines how the employment of laughter and humor, not only its comical but also its ludicrous and incongruous aspects, plays a fundamental role in the construction and representation of gender in Old Norse-Icelandic texts, and reinforces or interrogates existing models of masculinity and femininity.
Geitarlauf is an Old Norse translation of Marie de France’s lai du Chievrefoil. Only 118 lines long in the original, and covering just under one manuscript page in the Norse, the lai describes a single episode in the long and complicated story of Tristan and Isolde. Banished from the court of King Mark, Tristan hears that the queen plans to ride to Tintagel for Pentecost. He hides in the forest along the route and carves a message on a hazel branch. In the Anglo-Norman text, the exact nature of this message is unclear, but the Old Norse version quotes it in full:
Sva ferr með ocr kvað hann sem viðuindil sa er binnz um hæslivið. Meðan þessir tveir viðir bua baðer saman. þa liva ok bera lauf sitt. En sa er þessa viðe skildi hvarn frá oðrum. þa déyr haslenn ok þui nest uiðvinndillenn ok berr hvarki lauf. nema þorna ok firir verðaz bæðe. Hin friða unnasta min. Sva ok eftir þeim hætti ero vit. Ei ma ec lifa on þin. ok ei þu on min.
“It goes with us,” he said, “as with the honeysuckle that fastens itself around the hazel tree. As long as these two trees are together they live and produce foliage, but if anyone should separate these trees from each other, the hazel will die and then the honeysuckle, and neither of them will produce foliage; instead, they will both dry up and perish. My beautiful sweetheart, such and in the same way are we. I cannot live without you, nor you without me.”
The hazel branch functions as both message and metaphor in a telescopic layering of interpretative meaning. Isolde must find, read, and decode the message inscribed upon it; the message then invites her to compare the physical object she holds to the emotional and sexual ties that bind her to Tristan. As Peter Haidu writes: “The stick is a natural sign of itself. The sign, which normally supposes the absence of the signified, here signifies its presence” (2004, 130). The very wood through which Isolde rides becomes a symbol of secret communication and illicit desire. Isolde successfully interprets both message and metaphor, and the resulting meeting between the lovers gives rise to a new text, the lai itself. Geitarlauf demonstrates well the symbolic relationship between the act of traveling through the natural world and that of interpreting the written text. Indeed, this relationship is developed throughout the whole of Strengleikar, the compilation of translated Breton lais in which Geitarlauf is found. In particular, the island of Britain emerges as a key site for such explorations. It will be argued here that the Strengleikar collection demonstrates a sustained interest in the role of Britain as a setting for the romance text, and that travel through the British landscape parallels the process of reading and decoding the romance genre itself.
Consisting of twenty-one prose tales, Strengleikar translates into Old Norse eleven of the lais attributed to Marie de France, as well as six anonymous French poems; a further four of the Old Norse texts have no known origin. The collection is largely preserved within one manuscript, Uppsala University Library, de la Gardie 4–7. The manuscript dates to around the year 1270 and was likely produced in Bergen or the surrounding area. The translation was reputedly commissioned by Hákon Hákonarson, king of Norway, as part of a campaign to import Continental romance texts to his country. Ruling from 1217 to 1263, Hákon developed a keen interest in the life of the Anglo-Norman court and seems to have commissioned the translation of the lais as part of a wider cultural program that included the translation of several romance texts into Norse, as well as the adoption in Norway of English styles of painting, sculpture, and architecture. Such forms of cultural exchange were supported by a mutual reliance on trade and an increasingly close relationship between political and ecclesiastical authorities...
In this paper I present evidence for the pervasive influence of hagiographic themes, including the miraculous, shrines and
relics, and unrelenting mercy, on the biography of Hákon Hákonarson, King of Norway from 1217 to 1263. These elements are
extant to a greater degree in Hákon’s biography than in any saga of the Heimskringla save that of St Olaf. Furthermore, I argue that the saga’s portrayal of the king as a saintly figure serves to compare him
to the greatest Christian kings of the preceding centuries, even if only within the memorialization of the text itself and
not in later memory. Studies of the saga remain largely historical, providing a (sometimes contested) backdrop of factual
information over which studies of other literary and historical texts are made. With the current contribution I offer a different
view, namely that of a richly textured royal biography that draws on the dominant literary forms of its day.
KeywordsSaga–Kingship–Hagiography–Norway–Old Norse–
Hákonar saga Hákonarsonar