Three Northern Love Stories and Other Tales
The Frithiof, on the other hand, is an example of the large class of romantic stories that took their present form in the fourteenth century, though it can scarcely be questioned that something of them must have existed in some guise at a much earlier date. Though the Frithiof Saga is not mentioned in any earlier work, it bears in one part signs of its having had an earlier form: for some of the (apparent) prose of it is really verse; and it is remarkable that this happens in the typical part of the tale, viz. where Frithiof comes disguised to King Ring.
The Viglund, again, in spite of its story being localised definitely enough, is confessedly nothing but a pure fiction, and in more than one place the tale-teller has borrowed from earlier stories: e.g. the incident at p. 192 from the Frithiof; and the fight in which the sons of Holmkell are slain from the story of Helgi and grim, the sons of Droplaug. It should be mentioned that the melody given in it is an old traditional one in Iceland, and may be taken as an example of the sort of tune to which the staves of verse in the Sagas were sung.
The story of Hogni and Hedinn is a late and amplified version of the mythological tale given in the Skáldskaparmál (or Treatise on Poetic Diction), a translation of which we add in a note.
Roi the Fool, in spite of its very characteristic Northern colouring, is a version of an Eastern story, and is probably adapted directly from some Latin translation of the mediæval Greek Syntipas, the earliest European version of that “Seven Wise Masters,” which is also found in the Thousand and One Nights under the title of “The King, his Son, and the Seven Wezeers:” at p. 163 of the 3rd Vol. of Mr. Lane's translation the reader will find the Arabian version of Roi the Fool. (1)
The short tale of Thorstein Staff-smitten is a kind of hanger-on to the more important story of “the Weapon-firth Men,” the people of a district in the North-east of Iceland. Biarni of Hof is the hero of the second generation in this tale: at the fight at Bodvarsdale, mentioned more than once in our story, he met and defeated his cousin, whom he afterwards treated with a generosity and forbearance much of a piece with his dealings with Thorstein Staff-smitten.
Notes:
1. We must note here, in illustration of the wandering of this story, that it is found only in the ancient Icelandic MS commonly called the Flateyjarbók, and in that part of it which was written before 1380: from the manner of its adaptation it would seem that the tale came to Iceland from Denmark. It is to be added, that the Flateyjarbók was certainly written at Viðidalstungu (in Iceland) by two clerks, Jón Þorhallson and Magnús Þorðarson, probably chaplains (heimilisprestar) of the lord of the manor, and belonged apparently from the beginning to Jón Hákonarson, who by a charter (máldagi) for the church of Viðidalstungu, dated 1394, is proved to have been master of that stead about the time when the MS. was being written. [Back]
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