SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

Saga-Book of the Viking Society
vity and disregard for conventional scholarly presentation. My
criticism should not prevent the reader from recognizing such
virtues or from appreciating his very genuine talents as a literary
essayist. And we need more books of this kind as ail antidote to
all the many more trustworthy but infinitely more boring saga
studies we have to read.
LARS LONNROTH
ARROW-ODD: A MEDIEVAL NOVEL. Translated by PAUL EDWARDS
and HERMANN PALSSON. University of London Press Ltd. 1970.
136+xxii pp. $5'95.
HROLF GAUTREKSSON: A VIKING ROMANCE. Translated by
HERMANN PALSSON and PAUL EDWARDS. The New Saga Library.
Southside, 1972. 150 pp. 95p.
Each of these translations of Fornaldarsogur includes a short
introduction, chiefly on the literary aspects of the sagas;
Arrow-Odd has an appendix on Sources and Parallels, and an
index; Hrolf Gautreksson has a "list of characters"
The translations are in fluent, modern English, though at times
I found them rather too racy and colloquial. Thus the prophetess
in Oruar-Odds saga, about to deliver her prophecy, says: "It's
good to see you here, Ingjald" (f>at er vel, Ingjaldr . . . at Jni ert
her kominn), and in ch, 3 Oddr addresses himself to Asmundr in
the following terms: "Our voyage is going to be a bit of a bore if
we're to row all the way north to Hrafnista" (ErfiOlig er for okkar,
ef vit skulum r6a alta leiiJ noriJr til Hrafnistu). In the matter of
accuracy the translators do both well and less well. I found few
straightforward errors, although "They said their farewells to
Ingjald and he wished them luck" in ch. 3 of Arrow-Odd seems an
odd rendering of. . ganga afund I ngjalds ok bio]« hann vel lifa.
Perhaps the translation at this point is not from Gul'5ni J6nsson's
Fornaldar sbgur norourlanda. (The English version, we are told,
is "based on" this text, but "made from" might have been less
ambiguous if this is what is rneant.) Faithfulness to the wording
of the original is a harder test of accuracy. Clearly one does not
want an entirely literal rendering of the Icelandic, but "writing
up" the sagas is a practice to be deprecated. Some typical
examples from these translations are: (Arrow-Odd, ch. 2) "take
turns to hear from you" (hafa af Pir fret!ir); (ch. 4) "making the
Lapp women squeal" (at grata Finnurnar); (ch. 5) "There's a
crowd of people swarming down from the forest" (Ek se
mannfjolda mikinn koma fram 6r morkinni); (Hrolf Gautreksson,