The French connection Some Icelandic translations of French literature in manuscript and print, ca. 1400-1900

: h e extent of manuscript production in medieval Iceland is well known; less well known is that manuscript transmission remained the norm in Iceland well into the modern era, long at er the arrival of the printing press. h e range of types of literary works preserved in these manuscripts is vast. Although the bulk of this literature was indigenous and in Icelandic, many works were translated, too, both from Latin and the various European vernaculars. h e present essay examines a few of the French literary works that survive in Icelandic translations, both in manuscript and print, from h omas’s Tristan to Jules Verne

Mots-clés : manuscrits islandais, traductions, littérature islandaise, rímur , Tristrams saga , Möttuls saga , Chrétien de Troyes, Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian, Voltaire, Les Mille et une nuits , Jules Verne Riassunto : L'estensione della produzione di manoscritti nell'Islanda medievale è ben nota ; meno noto è che la trasmissione manoscritta sia rimasta la norma in Islanda i no all'età moderna, molto tempo Introduction 1 Iceland -nowadays probably best known for its glaciers and volcanos, its i nancial crisis and its lively music scene -also has a long history as a hotbed of literary activity, starting with the Eddas and sagas of the medieval period and extending to the crime i ction of the present day.For most of Iceland's history, this literature circulated predominantly in handwritten form, as manuscripts, initially on vellum, later on paper.Indeed, for certain types of literature at least, manuscript transmission remained the norm in Iceland well into the modern era, long at er the arrival of the i rst printing press in the mid-sixteenth century 2 .h e range of types of literature preserved is vast, from sombre works of religious devotion to romping romances and tales of derring-do.Although Latin learning was certainly not unknown in Iceland, the bulk of this literature was in Icelandic, and was the product of the indigenous Icelandic imagination.But many works were translated, too, both from Latin and the various European vernaculars, not least French 3 .h e Icelanders' appetite for good stories was voracious, and it is clear that pretty much anything that was known on the continent was likely eventually to i nd its way to Iceland.In the present essay, I will examine a selection of the French literary works that survive in Icelandic translations, primarily handwritten but some also in print, the routes by which they travelled there and their later fates in Iceland once they were there 4 .h e medieval legacy: From romans courtois to riddarasögur h e culture of the book came to the north with Christianity, and among the i rst things to be translated were works which served the needs of the Church, such 1.h is article is based on the keynote lecture I gave at the II e congrès de l'Association pour les études nordiques (APEN) , Caen, 15 June 2017.2. On the relationship between manuscript and print in Iceland, and the reasons for the longevity of chirographic transmission, see Driscoll , 2013 and Ólafsson , 2017.  3. A preliminary list of Icelandic translations and adaptations from French is found in Þorgilsson ,  1954.  4. h e selection of texts treated here has not been made on any scientii c basis; rather I have chosen those texts among those I have encountered in the course of my research which I have found the most interesting.I believe, however, that they are representative of the kinds of material translated.
As the native literature began to emerge in the second half of the twelt h century, so too did translations of secular works begin to appear, both from Latin and, increasingly as time went on, vernacular languages.About twenty Old Norse-Icelandic 5 translations of European courtly romance, most of them from French, survive from the medieval period.h ese translations, known as riddarasögur (lit.sagas of knights) 6 , are for the most part thought to have been made in Norway, but nearly all survive chiel y or exclusively in Icelandic copies 7 .

Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar
h e earliest of these is likely to be Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar (h e saga of Tristram and Ísönd), a translation of the romance Tristan by the twelt h-century Anglo-Norman poet h omas of Britain, produced, according to the prologue, by one "Bróðir Róbert" (Brother Robert) in 1226 at the behest of King Hákon Hákonarson of Norway (r.1217-1263).
Tristrams saga survives in eight manuscripts, all of them Icelandic.h ere are two vellum fragments from the late i t eenth century, while the rest are paper manuscripts from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.h e oldest Tristrams saga manuscript to preserve the prologue containing the attribution to Brother Robert is Copenhagen, Arnamagnaean Collection, AM 543 4to (i g. 1), a paper manuscript dated to the seventeenth century.h e prologue reads as follows: Hier skrifast Sagann af Tristram og Jsónd Drottningu j hvórri talad verdur umm Obaerelega Ast er þau hófdu sijn a Millumm.Var þä lided frä hingadburde Christi 1226 Aar, er þessi Saga var a Norraenu skrifud, epter befalningu og skipan Virduglegs herra Hakonar kongz.En Broder Robert efnade og uppskrifade epter sinne kunnattu, med þessum Ordtökumm sem epteri lger i Sógunni.og nu skal fra seigia.
(Written down here is the story of Tristram and Queen Ísönd, in which is told about the unbearable love they had between them.1226 years had passed since the birth of Christ when this saga was translated into Norse at the behest and order of the venerable King Hákon.Brother Robert prepared the text and wrote it down according to his knowledge in the words appearing in this saga, and now it shall be told.) 85. 'Old Norse-Icelandic' denotes the common language of Norway and Iceland (and the Faroe Islands, Orkney, Shetland and the Norse settlements in Greenland) in the Middle Ages.h e two languages, Icelandic and Norwegian, began to diverge in the fourteenth century.6. h e same designation is applied to slightly younger indigenous Icelandic works which were written, at least in part, in imitation of these translated romances and take place in a courtly milieu; they are sometimes also referred to as lygisögur (lit.lying sagas); see Driscoll , 2005.7. On these translated romances see e.g.Maclean , 1972, Kalinke , 1985, Barnes , 1993, Thorleifsdóttir ,  2004, 2007, Glauser , 2005, Eriksen , 2017.8.All translations in the present article are by the author.Owing to his name -and his obvious familiarity with Norman French -it has been suggested that "Bróðir Róbert" may have himself been a Norman, who had however become l uent enough in Old Norse to be able to translate into that language.Elis saga ok Rósamundu , a translation of the French romance Elie de Saint Gille , is similarly attributed to a "Róbert ábóti" (Abbot Robert), presumably the same man now further advanced in his ecclesiastical career 9 .
Tristrams saga has received a good deal of scholarly attention, both as it is the most complete representative of h omas's Tristan extant and also owing to its assumed position as the earliest of the Old Norse translations of French 9. Schach , 1975.h   12 -Jarlmanns saga ok Hermanns and several other romances, and also in "Spesar þáttr", the i nal section of Grettis saga .Similarly, alleged inl uence from the Tristan story has been detected in the four so-called skáldasögur , or "poets' sagas", Kormáks saga in particular, to such a degree that Bjarni Einarsson, for example, could refer to Kormákr as "Tristan Íslands" (the Icelandic Tristan) 13 .Recently, however, a number of scholars, Alison Finlay foremost among them 14 , have rejected the idea that there are any narrative correspondences between Tristrams saga and the poets' sagas, and the whole question of the saga's position and inl uence may be said to be ripe for reassessment.
From the same period, the mid-thirteenth century, are translations of three of the i ve romances attributed to Chrétien de Troyes (late twelt h century): Erex saga ( Érec et Énide ), Ívens saga ( Yvain, le Chevalier au Lion ) and Parcevals saga , with Valvens þáttur 15 ( Perceval, le Conte du Graal ).h e translations are all thought to date from the mid-thirteenth century, and all, like Tristrams saga , are believed to have been made at the behest of King Hákon Hákonarson 16 ; in the case of Ívens saga , this is explicitly stated in the epilogue.As with most material of this sort, texts of these translations survive only in copies made in Iceland.Ívens saga and Parcevals saga are both found in i t eenth-century vellums, but these are defective, so the only complete texts are younger, and Erex saga survives only in paper copies from the seventeenth century and later 17 .
All of these translations suf er from textual attrition vis-à-vis their French sources, on average a reduction of 40-60%.It is dii cult to know at what stage this attrition took place, i.e. whether at the time of translation or later in the course of transmission, though, on the whole, the latter seems more likely 18 .Typically, descriptions of equipment, clothes and horses are reduced or removed, as are expressions of inner conl ict by the protagonists on the nature of love and honour and any i rst person commentary by the narrator -in short, much of what may be said to characterise Chrétien's romances.

Möttuls saga and Skikkjurímur
Apparently also from the time of King Hákon Hákonarson is Möttuls saga (h e saga of the mantel), a translation of La mantel mautaillé (also known as Le Lai du cort mantel ), a somewhat frivolous tale of a chastity testing mantle sent to King Arthur's court, dating from the end of the twelt h century or the beginning of the thirteenth (there are vellum manuscripts from the fourteenth and i t eenth centuries) 19 .
It has been suggested that Möttuls saga may have been, at er Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar , the earliest of the Arthurian romances to be translated into Old Norse-Icelandic.Among the evidence adduced for this is the presence in the saga of a long introductory section describing King Arthur in the most glorious terms.h is section has no parallel in the French original -and indeed would have been quite out of place there -but, it has been argued, would have been necessary to bring a Norwegian audience unfamiliar with the i gure of King Arthur up to speed.h e misnaming for example of Parceval as Paternas and Yvain/Íven as Meon in the saga has also been cited as evidence for an early date 20 .
h e saga's transmission history is complicated.h ere are two branches, both represented by late medieval (fourteenth-century) vellum fragments and paper copies from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries.Here again, all the manuscripts are Icelandic.
In Iceland, Möttuls saga , in turn, became the basis for Skikkjurímur (Mantle verses), composed probably in the i t eenth century, the only Icelandic rímur to deal with an Arthurian theme (i g. 2).Rímur -long metrical romances in complex metres making use of both alliteration and end-rhyme -were almost invariably based on pre-existing prose narratives 21 .While most rímur follow their sources quite closely, even slavishly, Skikkjurímur are unusual in that, although the basic plot of Möttuls saga remains unchanged, there are both lengthy additions and signii cant omissions.h e ef ect of these is to increase even further the burlesque element of the story, at the expense of any serious critique of courtoisie which underlies the humour of La mantel mautaillé 22 .
The French connection: Some Icelandic translations of French literature… Tabularia « Études », « Autour des sagas… », 2019, p. 1-24, 8 février 2019 A reference to Arthur's kringlótt sess , "round seat" -not mentioned in Möttuls saga -indicates that the poet had some notion of the existence of the famous round table, i rst described in Wace's Roman de Brut (1155), otherwise scarcely mentioned in early Icelandic sources 23 .

h e At erlife of Tristan in Iceland
In addition to the Old Norse-Icelandic Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar , mentioned above, there is a younger Saga af Tristram ok Ísodd (the Saga of Tristram and Ísodd), an original Icelandic composition of the fourteenth century, distinct from the thirteenth-century translation of Brother Robert.It is preserved in a single i t eenth-century vellum and four paper manuscripts from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.Although presumably derived from the older saga, the younger Saga af Tristram dif ers from it markedly.h e names of the characters do not always correspond to those in the older saga, and there are signii cant changes and simplii cations to the plot.
h is saga has also been the object of a good deal of scholarly attention, much of it focusing on its relation to its apparent source, the older Tristrams saga .Henry Goddard Leach, writing in 1921, thought it to be a vulgarisation, written for a less rei ned audience: "a boorish account of Tristram's noble passion" 24 .Paul Schach initially deemed it to have been "based on an imperfect recollection of the longer saga, which has been further distorted by the addition of names and situations from other sources" 25 , but later decided, "upon closer scrutiny", that it was "a deliberate caricature of the translated romance" 26 ; Marianne Kalinke went even further, seeing it as a parody not just of Tristrams saga but of Arthurian romance in general 27 .
I tend, I confess, to be rather sceptical of attempts to see irony everywhere, or the assumption that any two works dealing with vaguely similar subjects must be directly related to each other, and only to each other, ideally by one being a parody of the other.When I i rst read Saga af Tristram ok Ísodd it struck me as being a fairly typical late medieval Icelandic romance, no more distorted, exaggerated or vulgar than any other.In the last two decades or so a number of scholars 28 have argued for the necessity of viewing the younger saga in the literary and cultural context of late mediaeval Iceland, resulting in a far more nuanced view of this highly interesting work.
h e story of Tristan also gave rise to an Icelandic ballad.Although the ballad genre was never as popular in Iceland as it was in mainland Scandinavia or the British Isles, some i ne examples have been preserved 29 , perhaps none i ner than Tristrams kvaeði , thought to have been composed in the i t eenth century.Unlike many of the Icelandic ballads, Tristrams kvaeði has no parallels among the ballads of other traditions and there appears to be no reason to see it as anything other than an original Icelandic composition.Its simple refrain, " Þeim var ekki skapað nema (að) skilja " (h ey were fated only to be parted), seems to capture so beautifully the pathos of the Tristan story 30 .
Several centuries later, a Danish sentimental novel loosely based on the story of Tristan, En Tragoedisk Historie om den aedle og tappre Tistrand, Hertugens Søn af Borgundien, og den skiønne Jndiana, den store Mogul Keyserens Datter af Indien (A tragic story of the noble and valiant Tistrand, son of the duke of Burgundy, and the fair Indiana, daughter of the great mogul, emperor of India), i rst published in Christiania (present-day Oslo) in 1775 and reprinted at least nineteen times over the next century, also found its way to Iceland, where it was translated into Icelandic six times, both into prose and verse.In this version of the story, a great many changes have been made: the scene of the action has shit ed 24.Leach , 1921, p. 184.25.Schach , 1957-1961, p. 118.26.Schach , 1964, p. 281; this view was i rst put forward in Schach , 1960, and pursued in Schach , 1987.27.Kalinke , 1981, p. 199-202.28.See in particular Barnes , 1999, Kramarz-Bein , 2000, Francini , 2005.29.h e standard work on Icelandic ballads is Ólason , 1982.30.On the Icelandic ballad of Tristram see Driscoll , 2011, p. 169-71 and references there.
The French connection: Some Icelandic translations of French literature… Tabularia « Études », « Autour des sagas… », 2019, p. 1-24, 8 février 2019 from Cornwall, Ireland and Brittany to Spain, France and India, and, rather more fundamentally, the two protagonists, Tistrand and Indiana, though fated forever to love only each other, choose not to enter into an illicit sexual liaison.Instead, they agree to limit themselves to simple expressions of af ection: Tistrand may kiss her hand, while she will allow herself to stroke him on the cheek 31 .
By far the best known of the Icelandic treatments of this story are the Rímur af Tístrani og Indíönu by Sigurður Breiðj örð (1798-1846), the pre-eminent rímurpoet of the nineteenth century.Breiðj örð composed the rímur in the autumn of 1828 while staying at Helgafell on Snaefellsnes with his uncle, the clergyman Jóhann Bjarnason, who asked his nephew to compose a set of rímur for the entertainment of his household.Finding a copy of the Danish book on his uncle's bookshelf, he decided to use it as the basis for his rímur .Rímur , as was mentioned, are almost invariably based on previously existing prose sources, which the poets tend, by and large, to follow quite closely.Breiðj örð was rather free with his source, however, skipping over some sections and amplifying others as he saw i t.Not surprisingly, he tended to dwell on the types of scenes generally favoured by rímur -poets: descriptions of sea voyages, feelings of passion and, not least, battles 32 .Breiðj örð's Rímur af Tístrani og Indíönu were printed in 1831 -the i rst of his rímur to appear in print -but are also found in seven manuscripts, including an autograph (which in fact post-dates the printed text).h ey are nowadays chiel y known because of an extremely negative review of them written by the naturalist and romantic poet Jónas Hallgrímsson (1807-1845) in the third number of the journal Fjölnir (1837).Jónas takes issue with both the substance and style of Tístrans rímur , but his attack is directed not so much at them in particular as at the entire rímur genre, which he dismisses as simply bad poetry.Although Jónas's review is generally credited with having dealt the rímur their death blow, their popularity continued unabated throughout the nineteenth century 33 .
h e youngest of the Icelandic prose versions of the story, called simply Sagan af Tístran og Indíönu , is found in four paper manuscripts, the earliest from 1875, the latest from 1913, all written by the same man, Magnús Jónsson í Tjaldanesi 34 (1835-1922).Magnús, an ordinary farmer with no formal education, developed early on an interest in collecting and copying manuscripts, and copies, generally more than one, of nearly two hundred sagas are preserved in his hand 35 .Unlike the other prose versions, Magnús's Sagan af Tístran og Indíönu is not derived directly from the Danish novel, but is in fact a prose retelling of Sigurður Breiðj örð's rímur .h e phenomenon of recasting in prose rímur which were themselves based on prose sagas was commonplace, and may perhaps be compared to the relationship between, say, the books and i lms dealing with Harry Potter.Both versions tell essentially -but not necessarily entirely -the same story, only the medium is dif erent.
h e story of Tristan was thus known in Iceland for seven centuries, from the very beginnings of saga writing in the early thirteenth century to its very end in the early twentieth.Following its development, we can see how this quite simple story of two people who, through no fault of their own, were "fated only to be parted", was constantly reinvented over time, in widely dif ering genres, to suit the changing needs and tastes of successive audiences.

Florian's Numa Pompilius and Sélico
Sigurður Breiðj örð composed another set of rímur several years later based on material which also has its roots in France.h ese are his Rímur af Núma Pompilssyni , based on the novel Numa Pompilius, second roi de Rome by Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian (1755-1794), published in Paris in 1786.Scarcely known today, Florian was a popular author of novels, comedies and, in particular, fables, which were translated into all the languages of Europe.His historical novel Numa Pompilius appeared in Danish translation in 1792 as Numa Pompilius, Roms anden Konge .Núma rímur , composed in 1833, are based on this Danish translation.Breiðj örð had studied cooperage in Copenhagen and worked as a cooper in Greenland for a time.It was while in Greenland, suf ering from scurvy, that he composed his Núma rímur , which are widely regarded as the best of Breiðj örð's rímur36 .
Breiðj örð sticks to his source quite closely in most places, but does occasionally abridge or omit entirely episodes or details, especially those which are not directly relevant to the main plot.He also makes several additions, including three lengthy battle descriptions which have no parallel in the original and a detailed description of a battle i eld: these are staples of the rímur and so Breiðj örð presumably felt compelled to include them.
Núma rímur are found in an autograph manuscript, Reykjavík, National and University Library of Iceland, ÍB 304 4to (i g. 3), which was used as the basis for the i rst printed edition, which appeared in 1835.h e rímur have been printed a further three times, in 1903, 1937 and 1963, something   A prose version of the story, Sagan af Núma Pompilssyni, konungi Rómverja , is, like Sagan af Tístran og Indíönu , found in four paper manuscripts by Magnús Jónsson í Tjaldanesi.h e earliest of these is undated but probably from the 1860s, while the latest, Reykjavík, National and University Library of Iceland, Lbs 1505 4to, is written in 1900 (i g. 4).In a preface to this youngest manuscript Magnús says that he originally borrowed his exemplar from Kristján Magnússon á Kornsá in 1862.Kristján had copied the saga himself while at the i shing station in Gjögur, although he couldn't remember what manuscript he had copied it from.Magnús says that he was later able to get hold of a copy of the saga owned (and possibly written) by Kristján Ívarsson (1830-1900).h e text was essentially the same as his, he says, but he could not be sure whether this had been the exemplar used by Kristján Magnússon.A i t h manuscript of the saga, a late nineteenth-century copy in an unknown hand, bears the title "Sagan af Núma konungi Pompilssyni.Íslenskuð af Kristjáni fraeðimanni Ívarssyni" (h e saga of King Númi Pompilsson, Icelandicised by the scholar Kristján Ívarsson), which can only mean that the translation is by Kristján himself.Whether this was the copy used by Kristján Magnússon remains to be determined.Unlike the prose Sagan af Tístran og Indíönu mentioned above, this version is not a "prosii cation" of Sigurður Breiðj örð's rímur , but a translation of the Danish translation of Florian's novel.It must, however, post-date the composition of the rímur , certainly if it is true that the translation is by Kristján Ívarsson, who was born in 1830 and would have been only three years old when the rímur were composed.h e impetus for translating the saga presumably came from the great popularity of the rímur38 .
Another of Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian's works also found its way to Iceland.h is was the novella "Sélico: Nouvelle Africaine", published in 1792 in the collection Nouvelles Nouvelles .h e story, a contribution to the debate on the abolition of slavery, tells of a young Guinean, the virtuous Sélico, the youngest of three sons of the widow Darina.On the evening of his wedding to his beloved Bérissa, daughter of the high priest of their tribe, their lands are attacked by a rival tribe, the ferocious Dahomians.Driven from their home, and believing his beloved to have been killed, Sélico arranges to have himself sold into slavery by his brothers in order to save their mother from starvation.At the slave-market, however, they learn that the king of the Dahomians is of ering an enormous reward for the head of the man who invaded his seraglio and spent the night with his newest concubine.Sélico pretends to be this intruder, and is condemned to death.It emerges, however, that the concubine, who also is to be put to death, is none other than the still chaste Bérissa, and the intruder her father.h e king, moved by Sélico and Bérissa's virtue and sell essness, pardons them, and everyone lives happily ever at er. "Sélico" was translated into Icelandic by Hallgrímur Scheving (1781-1861), teacher and headmaster at the Latin school at Bessastaðir (from 1846 in Reykjavík), as "Selikó (Afrikanisk frásaga)", and printed in the second volume of Margvíslegt gaman og alvara (Assorted jocularity and seriousness), which appeared in 1818, twenty years at er the i rst volume, which had been published in 1798 (i g. 5).Hallgrímur Scheving was one of the most learned Icelanders of his day, an inspiring teacher, a great promoter of the Icelandic language and one of the precursors of the Icelandic national-romantic movement of the nineteenth century39 .It is not clear why he should have chosen precisely this story to translate, but presumably he found it edifying and thought it would appeal to his countrymen.If so, he was right.
h e story is also found in a number of hand-written copies, based on this printed edition, two of them by the previously mentioned Magnús Jónsson í Tjaldanesi.Hallgrímur's translation was reissued as a book for children, complete with illustrations, as Selíkó: Svertingjasaga með myndum (lit.Seliko: A negro-story with pictures), published in the north Icelandic town of Akureyri in 1926 and reissued in 1949 (i g. 6).  the geography and fetishist religious beliefs of the southern hemisphere for the further enlightenment of the less well informed).h ey are also found in i ve manuscripts, including one autograph, all post-dating the printed edition.
h is was clearly a story with which anyone in nineteenth-century Iceland was likely to have been familiar in one form or another.

Contes orientaux
Although not French as such, the collection of oriental tales translated and adapted by Jean-Antoine Galland (1646-1715) as Les Mille et une nuits made this wealth of material available to the European reading public through the medium of French.First published in twelve volumes in Paris between the years 1704 and 1711, Les Mille et une nuits was quickly translated into most other European languages.Although not initially printed, translations of the collection also found their way to Iceland, circulating in manuscript.h ere are in fact three separate Icelandic translations of all or part of the collection, all based on the Danish translation of 1746 40 .
h e earliest version is from the second half of the eighteenth century and may be by the clergyman Árni Gíslason að Stafafelli (1755-1840).Shown here is the title page of the second of the three translations, preserved in Reykjavík, National and University Library of Iceland, Lbs 1655 4to (i g.Two selections from the 1001 Nights were printed in 1835 and 1852 and a complete translation by Steingrímur h orsteinsson (1831-1913), headmaster of the Latin school in Reykjavík, appeared in 1857-64 (revised edition 1910-12).
A similar collection of Persian tales was translated by François Pétis de la Croix (1653-1713) and published in i ve volumes as Les Mille et un jours, contes persans in 1710-1712.Although less well known today than the 1001 Nights it was highly popular in its day -one of its tales, the fourth one, that of Calaf, served as the source for Puccini's opera Turandot .Given its popularity, the collection also inevitably found its way to Iceland, where it was translated into Icelandic in whole or in part i ve times 41 .h e i rst of these, made sometime before 1770, was from the English translation of Ambrose Phillips, published in 1714; although only found in a manuscript from 1840, this translation must have been made before 1770, as it served as the basis for a set of Rímur af Refsímu by Páll Sveinsson, which were composed in that year and are based on the nineteenth and i nal tale in the collection, which tells of the virtuous Repsima, falsely accused of adultery by her brother-in-law, whose advances she had spurned.h e other four translations The French connection: Some Icelandic translations of French literature… Tabularia « Études », « Autour des sagas… », 2019, p. 1-24, 8 février 2019  all of one mind -is reduced to a few sentences, and the question of religion avoided entirely.Presumably the reason for this omission is that the translator, a minister in the Lutheran church, disagreed with its message, that Christianity is no better than any other religion.Given that this is one of basic tenets of deism, a philosophy espoused by Voltaire, this is indeed a signii cant change.
Ironically, this changes the nature of Voltaire's work, removing, as it were, the philosophie from his conte philosophique and bringing it more into line with the contes orientaux of which Zadig is in some ways a pastiche42 .
Le voyage au centre de la Terre I recently encountered a translation of the i rst part of, for a foreigner at least, that most quintessentially French of works, Jules Verne's Le voyage au centre de la Terre , which was i rst published in French in 1864.h e Icelandic translation, called "Ferð til jarðar-möndulsins" (lit.Journey to the Earth's axis), is found in the paper manuscript Reykjavík, National and University Library of Iceland, Lbs 1631 4to (i g. 9), written in 1869-70 -just three years at er the publication of the original -by the clergyman Þorleifur Jónsson á Skinnastað (1845-1911).Although I have not yet been able to investigate the translation, it seems likely that it was made directly from the French, as the Danish translation, Rejsen til Jordens Indre , did not appear until 1898.It is hardly surprising that this novel, so popular everywhere, became known in Iceland, given that part of it actually takes place there.What is surprising is that the i rst complete Icelandic translation was not published until 1944, with a slight modii cation to the title: Leyndardómur Snaefellsjökuls: För í iður jarðar (h e mystery of Snaefellsjökull: Journey to the centre of the Earth).

Conclusion
Even from this short and superi cial review of just a few of the French literary works that washed up on Iceland's shores it should be clear that the hunger for good stories among the Icelanders was such that virtually anything could be turned into a saga or a set of rímur -generally both.In the process, some things were inevitably "lost in translation", both accidentally and deliberately, owing to cultural or linguistic dif erences.But a good story remained a good story, even if some of its meanings failed to complete the journey.While some of the works mentioned here were translated directly from French, it was more common for such material to reach Iceland via other languages, primarily Danish -not unnaturally, as Iceland was part of the kingdom of Denmark (from the fourteenth to the twentieth century) and Danish was the foreign language, along with Latin, with which most people were familiar.It is striking how much reached Iceland, demonstrating that despite its geographical location on the edge of the inhabitable world, Iceland was far from isolated.It is also striking how quickly things reached Iceland, ot en within a generation.Voltaire's Zadig i rst appeared in French in 1748; it was translated into Danish just two years later, and into Icelandic by the end of the century.And Florian's story "Sélico" appeared in print in Iceland just 26 years at er its original

Fig. 7 :
Fig. 7: Reykjavík, National and University Library of Iceland, Lbs 1655 4to, title page of a translation of Les Mille et une nuits , copied in 1816