Breta Sögur

The Breta sögur are a relatively free translation of the Historia Regum Britanniae by Geoffrey of Monmouth into Old Icelandic prose, adapted to the Icelandic public . The Latin Historia is preserved in numerous manuscripts in many variants, so that it is difficult to determine the exact model. A closer comparison of the text allows the conclusion that several templates or mixed handwriting were used.

The reason for the transfer may have been that it also deals with the Icelandic prehistory: The King of Thule fights on the side of the British King Arthur , and the Orkney , Norway , Gotland and Denmark are tributaries to King Arthur. In addition, it is possible to establish a connection between the leading Icelandic families and the Trojan royal family by raising Håkon the Good with the English king Æthelstan .

The Breta sögur were preceded by the Trójumanna saga and linked to them by replacing the first 5 paragraphs of the Historia with a summary of Virgil's Aeneid . This is how the only complete version that is preserved in the Hauksbók was created and covers the period from the divine ancestors of King Priam to the Norwegian King Håkon the Good.

In the course of the action, the Breta closely follow their template. But in addition to translated passages, there are chapters in which the texts of the original are summarized in abbreviated form. The cuts get bigger and bigger as the saga progresses. The story of King Arthur, which takes up a quarter of the text in the Latin original, is particularly affected by the shortening. However, the personal description goes beyond the original and includes elements of other medieval literature or glosses in the original. But for the Icelandic readers he was only one king among many. The principle of giving all kings roughly the same room leads to considerably fewer cuts in the last part for the time after the death of King Arthur. The model for the structure and style were evidently the old Norwegian-Icelandic king sagas Ágrip , Historia Norvegiae or the Historia de antiquitate regum Norvagensium by Theodericus Monachus.

The parallelism to the old royal sagas suggests that a historical work was intended here. As good as no evaluations are made, which is particularly clear where the Historia expresses derogatory opinion about Scandinavia and its residents. There the predatory image of the Viking Age was transferred to the people of the 5th and 6th centuries. The allusions in the original to English conditions, which were irrelevant to Icelandic readers of the 12th and 13th centuries, have also been deleted. The Breta Sögur avoid taking sides and focus on neutral reporting.

Numerous passages, in particular the Merlínuspá (= Merlin's prophecy), which was rearranged in the order and the Völuspá from the Edda, which is also passed down in the Hauksbók, allow the conclusion that Gunnlaugr Leifsson († 1218 or 1219) or a Friar in the Icelandic Þingeyrar monastery was the author.

The contents of the Breta sögur are shown schematically below. The original orthography of the names has been retained, where the German words have different meanings. "Saxa" and " Saxland " are not the Saxons and the state of Saxony , but correspond to the Latin Germani and Germania .

literature

Icelandic sagas of antiquity 1 . Eugen Diederichs Verlag, Munich 1996, ISBN 3424012610