Arthur, King of Iceland

“It was in Norway, be it noted, that Arthurian romance was first welcomed into the Scandinavian North in the early thirteenth century” (Schlauch 1934, 10). Thus wrote Margaret Schlauch, whose magisterial Romance in Iceland, published eight decades ago, remains the authoritative introduction to the elusive genre of romance. The Arthur of literature first came to Iceland, however, with Breta sögur, the translation of the Historia regum Britanniae, around the year 1200. The Latin source of the Icelandic translation is unknown, but in many respects, it diverged strikingly from the extant versions of the Historia—and precisely in those aspects that were to be popularized by romance.

Geoffrey of Monmouth reports in the Historia regum Britanniae that Arthur “classem suam direxit in Islandiam eamque debellato populo subiugauit” [“took his fleet to Iceland, where he defeated the natives and conquered their land” (Reeve and Wright 2007, 204–5)]. In the Roman de Brut, its author Wace elaborates on Arthur’s conquest of Iceland. Over the course of twenty verses, Wace reports that there was none like Arthur for military might, and therefore, the kings of Orkney, Gotland, and Wenelande feared that Arthur might attack their islands too. Therefore, they travel to Iceland, bringing him many of their possessions; they give him hostages and become his men (Weiss 2002, 9708–27). Peace is established, and Arthur then returns to England.

Wace’s Brut, completed in 1155, was the first vernacular translation of the Historia regum Britanniae. The second translation occurred around 1200 in Iceland and is known as Breta sögur. It presumably was preceded, however, by the separate rendering of the Historia’s “Prophetiae Merlini” in verse, in the so-called fornyrðislag stanzas used in the prophetic Eddic poem Völuspá, “The Prophecy of the Seeress.” Merlínússpá, as the translation is known, was composed around 1200 by Gunnlaugr Leifsson (d. 1218 or 1219), a monk in the Benedictine monastery of Þingeyrar in northern Iceland, a monastery noted for the production of historiography (Turville-Petre 1953, 190–202). To judge by some of the deviations of Merlínússpá from the “Prophetiae,” Gunnlaugr knew the Historia, for his translation contains additions incorporated into the poem from other parts of the Historia (Turville-Petre 1953, 202; Eysteinsson 1953–1955, 98–103). It is not unlikely that Gunnlaugr also translated Breta sögur, possibly in tandem with or as a follow-up to Merlínússpá. Even if Gunnlaugr himself was not the translator, a monastery like Þingeyrar, which was noted for producing Latin historiography, would have had the expertise to render Geoffrey’s Historia into Icelandic.¹

Breta sögur is extant in two redactions: the one is transmitted in the manuscript AM 544 4to, the so-called Hauksbók, named after its compiler and redactor, Haukr Erlendsson; the other redaction is in AM 573 4to. Breta sögur in Hauksbók is a heavily redacted and abbreviated version of the translation; it was produced in the period 1302–1310 (Stefán Karlsson 2000, 306–7, 309). The manuscript AM 573 4to was written in the period 1330–1370. This redaction of Breta sögur has not suffered the editorial incursions and reduction of text evident in Hauksbók. Although the text in AM 573 4to cannot be said to represent the translator’s own rendering, it nonetheless approximates that of the original translation. Whereas Breta sögur in Hauksbók has been edited (Jόn Sigurdsson 1849; Finnur Jόnsson and Eiríkur Jόnsson 1892–1896), the AM 573 4to redaction is accessible only in manuscript. The following study of Breta sögur is based on the redaction in AM 573 4to.²

Breta sögur refers twice to Merlínússpá. The first time, corresponding to the end of Part IV of the Historia, the translator writes that Merlin then began his prophecies about the lives of the kings to come in the poem “er Merlíns spa heitir er orti Gunnlaugr munkr Leifs son ok kunna margir menn þat kuædi” [that is called Merlínússpá, which Gunnlaugr Leifsson composed, and many people...