This three-volume set of editions and translations celebrates the literary and cultural connections between the Nordic countries and France that helped to bring Tristan and the Arthurian romances northward... thus the entire set of texts can be read as a study in Norse literary patronage, of literary renewal and transformation... A major contribution, not only to the Old Norse field, but to the broader world of medieval literature and culture. Norse Romance will endure for years to come. SPECULUM Norse Romancescomprises a three-volume set, making available for the first time critical editions and translations of important medieval Arthurian texts from Iceland, Norway and Sweden, under the general editorship of Marianne Kalinke. The first to appear is devoted to the Tristan legend. It contains Geitarlauf and Janual, Old Norse translations of the French lais Lanval and Chevrefeuil; Tristrams saga ok Isöndar, Brother Thomas's Old Norse translationof Thomas's Tristan, dated 1226 and commissioned by King Hákon Hákonarson the Old of Norway; `Tristrams kvædi', a fourteenth-century Icelandic `Tristan' ballad; and the Saga af Tristram ok Isodd, a fourteenth-century Icelandic version of the Old Norse Tristrams saga ok Isöndar.
The translators are: ROBERT COOK, PETER JORGENSEN, JOYCE HILL, MARIANNE E. KALINKE. Professor MARIANNE KALINKE teaches in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.