Guta Saga in Translation

Activity: Talk or presentation typesLecture and oral contribution

Description

Guta saga is best known from the manuscript Stockholm, Royal Library, B 64, the only extant manuscript to preserve the tale in its entirety in the Old Gutnish language. However, four additional manuscripts preserve the text — either in part or in whole — in translation: one in German (Cod. Holm. B 65), two in Danish (Copenhagen, Royal Library, GKS 408 4to and NKS 2414 4to), and one in Swedish (Cod. Holm. D 2).
While each of these texts have been edited (Schlyter 1852, Ljunggren 1959), they have received relatively little attention as they do not diverge greatly from the text found in B 64. Nevertheless, the four manuscripts appear to form two branches of the text which are independent from the Old Gutnish text as found in B 64.
This paper takes its point of departure in the versions of Guta saga preserved only in translation and addresses the following questions:
1. What do the material aspects of the manuscripts add to our understanding of the stemma?
2. From which language is each manuscript translated, and is it the original translation or a copy?
3. What gaps in the Old Gutnish text can be filled by these translations?
From a broader perspective, this paper addresses questions of establishing stemmtatic relations of translated texts, such as what types of variation may be considered useful for determining groupings of manuscripts.
Period13 Jun 2019
Event titleSällskap för östnordisk filologis 4. internationella konferens
Event typeConference
LocationCologne, GermanyShow on map
Degree of RecognitionInternational

Keywords

  • Gutnish
  • East Norse
  • Guta Saga
  • Manuscript Transmission
  • Translation