Britain as Sjónhverfing: Decoding the Landscape in Strengleikar

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,¹ 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.

(Cook and Tveitane 1979, 198)²

“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.”

(Cook and Tveitane 1979, 199)

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.³ 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 4–7.⁴ 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...