DATING RAU‹ÚLFS ﬁÁTTRBY ANTHONY FAULKES

In my monograph in Studia Islandica 25, Rau›úlfs ﬂáttr. A Study(Reykjavík 1966), 39–40, I drew attention to three loanwords in the ﬂáttrfrom Old French. One, kurteisi (OF corteisie) is common in Old Icelandic,
and not only in romance sagas; one of the earliest appearances is in Jarteinabók
ﬁorláks byskups in forna, in AM 645 4to (written c.1220); the corresponding
adjective kurteiss (in the superlative form) appears already in the twelfthcentury Lei›arvísir, probably written by Abbot Nikulás between 1154 and1159 (Alfræ›i íslenzk I, 1908, 13; cf. Bjarni Einarsson, ‘The LovesickSkald’, Mediaeval Scandinavia 4, 1971, 35 and note 24). The other two,purtréa ‘adorn with pictures’ (OF pourtraire) and flúr ‘flower’ (OF flour,flor) are found in late thirteenth- and fourteenth-century texts, mainly
romance sagas and religious works; Fritzner and Cleasby–Vigfússon (W. A.
Craigie’s Supplement) list examples of purtréa in Stjórn, Clarus saga,Rémundar saga; flúr ‘flower’ is found in Barlaams saga (oldest manuscript1275) and Biskupa sögur II (fourteenth century), Flóres saga ok Blankiflúr,Stjórn, Karlamagnús saga, Ævint‡ri íslenzk 1882, Heilagra manna sögur
I 525/17 (Marthe saga ok Marie Magdelene (manuscripts fourteenthcentury); also in Sverris saga (early thirteenth century) in the sense ‘flour’;cf. Edda Snorra Sturlusonar 1848–87, II 493 (sá›s heiti).
Because a shortened version of Rau›úlfs ﬂáttr seems to be incorporated
into Snorri Sturluson’s Heimskringla (ÍF XXVII 298–99; cf. Sigur›urNordal, Om Olav den helliges saga (1914), 87), and there is reason tothink that the original version of the ﬂáttr was later than Styrmir Kárason’sÓláfs saga helga, it seemed to me likely that it was first written in thethird decade of the thirteenth century. But Old Widding (in his amusing
article ‘Dating Rau›úlfs ﬂáttr’, Mediaeval Scandinavia I (1968), 115–121) argues that purtréa and flúr ‘are words belonging to a painter’s
vocabulary’ and that they ‘are attached’ to the ‘florissant stil’ whichdeveloped in Old Norse in the second half of the thirteenth century,
contemporaneously with a style of painting with flower decoration inchurch art in Norway. He uses this as evidence in support of his contention
that Snorri’s brief account of St Óláfr and Rau›(úlf)r was not a shorteningof Rau›úlfs ﬂáttr in the form in which we now have it interpolated into
his separate Óláfs saga helga, but was the original of which the extant
Rau›úlfs ﬂáttr was an expansion.
Two words in manuscripts that are obviously rather remote from theirarchetype cannot, of course, be used to date the composition of the original

text, since the date that the words entered the language cannot be precisely
determined, and anyway they could easily have been interpolated at somestage in the manuscript transmission, and Ole Widding supports hisargument with wider features of the style and language of the extant
Rau›úlfs ﬂáttr. But the fact that the language of the ﬂáttr shows Norwegian
influence does not really affect the situation, for Snorri might well havecome across the story in Norway, and anyway Norwegian influence on
spelling and style is not uncommon in Icelandic manuscripts towards theend of the thirteenth century. And interest in describing in detail artistic
decorations of buildings begins in Norse sagas much earlier than 1300 oreven 1250, for Tristrams saga, at any rate, seems to have been translated
as early as 1226. The author of Rau›úlfs ﬂáttr uses a considerable amountof material from southern European literature, including the descriptionof the revolving building and its decorations, and most notably the ‘gabs’
or boasting, and the story with which the ﬂáttr has the greatest affinity is
Le Voyage de Charlamagne, which included both motifs (there is noindication that the author of the ﬂáttr was acquainted with the translationof this story in Karlamagnus saga). This chanson de geste is thought tohave been composed in the twelfth century, and one of the buildings in it
is said to have had decorations depicting all creation. Another building is
described as having been peinte a flors, so that two of the three Frenchwords in the ﬂáttr could actually have been derived directly from theFrench poem (the adjective corteis occurs in it several times, though it
does not use the word pourtraire). If the Norwegian or Icelandic authorof the ﬂáttr used a version of Le Voyage de Charlamagne, he must ofcourse have known French, and this would explain both his use of
loanwords from French and his partiality for romance-style descriptionsof buildings. There is no reason in either the language or style of the ﬂáttr
why it should not have been written early in the thirteenth century, andthe relationship between it and Snorri’s brief retelling of the story are
best explained by his having read it, possibly in Norway. There is noreason to suppose that the version he knew differed much from the onethat survives. Dating of texts, when the original manuscripts are no longerextant, by ‘linguistic facts’, is likely to be less reliable than dating themby their literary relations, which may inevitably be based on hypotheses,
but at least a terminus post quem for literary motifs can be securely derived
from the known facts of literary history, which is not inevitably more
subjective than linguistic history—at any rate when dealing with loanwords.

Two further addenda to Rau›úlfs ﬂáttr. A Study:P. 12: On dream rituals, see Nora Chadwick, ‘Dreams in early European literature’,Celtic Studies: Essays in Memory of Angus Matheson, 1912–1962, ed. J. Carneyand D. Greene (1968), 33–50.
P. 85, note 1: Cf. also the account of Sigur›r Jórsalafari’s travels in the Mediterranean area in Morkinskinna (ed. Finnur Jónsson, 1932), chs 46–8, pp. 338–52.