Jarlmanns saga ok Hermanns

Jarlmanns saga ok Hermanns (also known as Hermanns saga ok Jarlmanns) is a medieval Icelandic romance saga.

Synopsis

Kalinke and Mitchell summarise the saga thus:

The foster-brothers Hermann (son of the king of Frakkland) and Jarlmann (son of an earl) are of an age and have been educated together. Hermann sends Jarlmann to Miklagarðr to sue for the hand of Ríkilát. She has previously rejected many suitors, but Jarlmann wins her for Hermann by means of a magic ring. She cannot return with Jarlmann, however, until the armed forces of another suitor have been repelled. When the wedding finally takes place, Ríkilát is mysteriously abducted and imprisoned by the old king Rudent of Serkland who plans to marry her. Jarlmann feigns love for Þorbjörg, a giantess who guards Ríkilát, and a double wedding ceremony (Rudent-Ríkilát, Jarlmann-Þorbjörg) ensues. Hermann kills the old king and regains his abducted bride, while Jarlmann kills the giantess in the bridal bed. The foster-brothers and Ríkilát return to Frakkland for a second double wedding ceremony. Jarlmann marries the king's sister Herborg and receives half of the kingdom.^[1]

Influences

According to Paul Bibire, Jarlmanns saga ok Hermanns is certainly intended as a specific and intentional response to Konráðs saga, to which its shorter version contains an explicit reference: it deals, of course, with the hero's relationship with a faithful, though unjustly suspected, companion'.^[2] 'The author of Jarlmanns saga ok Hermanns was acquainted not only with indigenous Icelandic romances, such as Konráðs saga, but also with the Old Norse translation Tristrams saga ok Isondar, from which the proxy wooing, the bride as leech, and the problem of the proxy wooer as lover presumably derive. The hall-of-statues episode in Tristrams saga seems to have been the inspiration for the scene in which Jarlmann draws a picture of Hermann for Ríkilát to obtain her consent to the marriage'.^[3]

Manuscripts

The saga is attested in more manuscripts than almost any other Icelandic saga, around 70;^[4] the only competitor is Mágus saga jarls.^[5] There are two main early versions: a generally longer, more highbrow and probably earlier version, first attested in Eggertsbók (AM 556a-b 4to, from the later fifteenth century), and a generally shorter, more dymanic, probably younger version.^[6]

Editions and translations

• Agnete Loth (ed.), Late Medieval Icelandic Romances, Editiones Arnamagæanae, series B, 20–24, 5 vols Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1962–65, III 1-66. (The earlier version, with an English paraphrase.)
• Jarlmanns saga ok Hermanns i yngre handskrifters redaktion, ed. by Hugo Rydberg (Copenhagen: Møller, 1917). (The younger version.)
• Riddarasögur, ed. by Bjarni Vilhjálmsson, 6 vols (Reykjavík: Íslendingasagnaútgáfan, 1949-1951), VI 171-235. (Normalised version of Rydberg's text.)
• Jarlmanns och Hermanns Saga; efter Islandska Handskrifter utgifven med upplysande Anmarkningar, ed. by Joh. G. Liljegren (Stockholm: Zacharias Haeggstrom, 1819) (Swedish translation)
• An English translation of the younger version is being prepared by Alaric Hall and others, and is available online in draft form.^[7]

References

1. Marianne E. Kalinke and P. M. Mitchell, Bibliography of Old Norse–Icelandic Romances, Islandica, 44 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), pp. 52-53.
2. Bibire, Paul, 'From Riddarasaga to Lygisaga: The Norse Response to Romance', in Les Sagas de Chevaliers (Riddarasögur): Actes de la V^e Conférence Internationale sur les Sagas Présentés par Régis Boyer (Toulon. Juillet 1982), ed. by Régis Boyer, Serie Civilisations, 10 (Toulon: Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 1985), pp. 55-74 (p. 68).
3. Marianne E. Kalinke, 'Jarlmanns saga ok Hermanns', in Medieval Scandinavia: An Encyclopedia, ed. by Phillip Pulsiano (New York: Garland, 1993), p. 339.
4. Marianne E. Kalinke, 'Jarlmanns saga ok Hermanns', in Medieval Scandinavia: An Encyclopedia, ed. by Phillip Pulsiano (New York: Garland, 1993), p. 339.
5. Matthew Driscoll, `Late Prose Fiction (Lygisögur)', in A Companion to Old Norse-Icelandic Literature and Culture, ed. by Rory McTurk (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), pp. 190--204 (p. 194).
6. Cf. Marianne E. Kalinke and P. M. Mitchell, Bibliography of Old Norse–Icelandic Romances, Islandica, 44 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), p. 53.
7. Alaric Hall, 'Translating the Medieval Icelandic Romance-Sagas', Retrospective Methods Network Newsletter, 8 (May 2014), 65-67, http://www.helsinki.fi/folkloristiikka/English/RMN/.