The Arthur of the North

This book deals with the introduction of romance to Scandinavia in the thirteenth century and the cultural and literary context of the translations of Latin and French Arthurian literature, including the Tristan legend (with a chapter on the Byelorussian Tristan). It surveys the sources, redactions, and manuscript transmission of the translated texts and analyzes the peculiar nature of the Scandinavian Arthurian matter, including its transmission in prose, and the special place that the Swedish poem Harra Ivan has in the corpus. The volume also considers the late medieval and early modern ballads, rimur (narrative Icelandic poems), and chapbooks that were inspired by the medieval translations of the Tristan legend.