Breta sogur from AM 544 4to: an Edition and Translation

Abstract

In the years following the turn of the fourteenth century, an Icelandic lawyer named Haukr Erlendsson worked as a legal representative to the King of Norway. Haukr preserved many Icelandic literary renderings in a manuscript known today as the Hauksbók, much of which was written in his own hand. In addition to being an important witness to such Icelandic texts as the Eiriks saga rauða and the Landnámabók, the manuscript also contains significant continental masterpieces such as an Old Icelandic translation of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia regum Britannie, known as the Breta sǫgur. The following text contains a diplomatic edition of the Breta sǫgur in which I attempt to capture the original layout and orthography of the text written in Haukr's own hand. Each page of the manuscript is represented by a page in this edition in which all the medieval letter forms are represented, as are Haukr's spelling and formatting. The edition is accompanied by a facing page translation of Breta sǫgur in English. The relationship between Breta sǫgur and Geoffrey's Historia, which bears a close affinity with the Latin Vulgate Version, is indicated by the apparatus.