Tiodielis saga (review)

Tíódéls saga is an Icelandic redaction of Bisclaretz ljóð, the thirteenth-century Norse translation of the Breton lai Bisclavret, the story of a werewolf and his unfaithful wife. The tale is found in the Strengleikar compilation, which contains translations of twenty-one Old French lais, including four whose sources have not been preserved. Twenty-four manuscripts, the oldest a parchment from around 1600, transmit the Icelandic version of Bisclaretz ljóð with the deviating title Tíódéls saga. Tove Hovn Ohlsson notes that the variants of the protagonist's name in the manuscripts (Theodel, Theodil, Theodelus, Theodiel, Tiodel, Tiodelis, Tiodiel, and Tyodiel) resemble medieval Norwegian forms of Þjóðolfr, and she proposes that this name may actually have been found in the Norse translation (p. 21). This would have accorded with the French author's, respectively Norse translator's, penchant for giving the names of the lais in Breton, French or English, and Norse. Thus, the Tristanian lai Geitarlauf concludes with the comment that "bretar kalla gotulæf. valskir menn chæfrefuill. En ver megum kalla Geitarlauf" (The English call it gotulæf, the French chæfrefuill, and we can call it Geitarlauf). Hovn Ohlsson suggests that there had originally existed a similar additional comment in Bisclaretz ljóð, where we read that "Bisclaret het hann i bræzsko male. en norðmandingar kallaðo hann vargulf" (He was called Bisclaret in the Breton language, but the Northmen called him Vargulf). She conjectures that the translator may have added en ver megum kalla hann Þioðolf (p. xxii). That the translation might have contained an additional clause giving the compound name Þioðolf, literally 'folk wolf' (but the first syllable could also be an intensifier), makes sense to me, especially since we know, on the basis of an Icelandic redaction of another lai, Guiamars ljóð, that the medieval Norwegian manuscript containing the Strengleikar, De la Gardie 4-7, dated circa 1270, had already incurred corruption and loss of text from the original translation.

Tíódéls saga not only attests that some of the Strengleikar were known in Iceland but also bears witness to the proclivity of Icelandic redactors to revise and recreate existing narratives. Tíódéls saga is such a case, indeed a remarkable instance of a tale refashioned through changes in characterization and style with resulting shifts of emphasis. The story of Tíódél was popular in Iceland as is borne out by the fact that in addition to the saga, three different sets of rímur were composed, metrical narratives from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that recount his tale. The rímur are to be published in a separate volume (p. ix).

Tíódél is a shapeshifter, but unlike Bisclaret, he turns not only into a wolf but also a bear, and it is in the form of a polar bear that he is caught in the end. The Icelandic author transformed the narrative by establishing a greater contrast between the protagonist and his wife, who, unlike in the Norse translation, is depicted as the most hard-tempered of women, grim, wanton, overbearing, subject to the vices of this world, and deprived of eternal grace and glory—and the narrator adds: as is borne out in this æfintýr. In other words, the redactor presents the story as an exemplum illustrating the treachery of women. This approach to and interpretation of the story is confirmed throughout in any number of deviations from the Norse translation, not least of which is the fact that the wife has enjoyed a sexual relationship with another man for ten years. And at the end of the saga we learn that the wife had also killed three husbands, "although how this happened is not written here."

Tíódéls saga is stylistically different from Bisclaretz ljóð in that there is more extended alliteration in certain types of passages, such as when the wife seeks to wheedle Tíódél's secret out of him and...