Beschreibung:

The Saga of Nikulás Leikara, and the Saga of Hermann and Jarlmann, two riddarasögur (knights sagas), in Old Norse, decorated manuscript on paper [South Iceland (Elliðaey island), dated 1884] 126 leaves (including 3 endleaves at each end), complete, single column of approximately 18 lines in neat curling Icelandic script of Jón Magnússon of Elliðaey (his signature in multiple places, including statements of having written it in 1883 [front endleaf] and in 1883-1884 [second frontispiece] and having finished the book [end of text]), contemporary pagination for each individual text, frontispieces for each text in blue, red-brown and purple angular capitals, the largest initials there with plant-like penwork tendrils surrounding them (the second frontispiece with Tallman in error for Jarlman), pp. 47-48 with lines there cut short suggesting that this was copied from a manuscript exemplar with a partly torn away leaf, some spots and stains, but overall in good condition, 155 by 100mm.; contemporary buckram over pasteboards with brown leather spine, gilt-tooled with interlocking geometric shapes and Sögubòk, torn at top and bottom of spine, with losses to latter Some languages, such as Icelandic, entered a printed form so late that they forced the circulation of texts in them in manuscript as late as the nineteenth century. Nikulás saga leikara is a late medieval saga and tells the story of Nikulás who was the king of Hungary and a magician. In the narrative, his foster father, Earl Svívari, convinces the hero to win the hand of Princess Dorma of Constantinople, and a secret betrothal is arranged against Dormas fathers wishes. Nikulás then travels to Constantinople where he poses as a merchant in order to gain access to the Byzantine court, where he cures one of the kings men from a mysterious illness. He meets the princess secretly and they elope. However, the emperor (oddly named Valdimar) tries to bring them back through the use of magic, but the young couple escape instead and Valdimar kills his own mercenary army by mistake. The emperor accepts Nikulás as his rightful heir, and the couple return to the splendour of the Byzantine court. No medieval manuscripts of the saga now survive, but one was perhaps in the now incomplete fifteenth-century compendium now Stockholm, KB, Perg. fol. nr 7, and it is known now from over sixty manuscripts from the seventeenth to early twentieth century. The text was printed first in Winnepeg in 1889.The present witness is unknown and previously unrecorded. Jarlmanns saga ok Hermanns concerns two foster-brothers, one the son of the king of Frakkland and the other the son of an earl. They are both sent to Constantinople to petition the emperor for the hand in marriage of Princess Ríkilát. Jarlmann wins her for Hermann by means of a magic ring. However, she is then abducted and imprisoned by the old king Rudent of Serkland who plans to marry her. Jarlmann feigns love for Þorbjörg, a giantess who guards Ríkilát, and a double wedding ceremony (Rudent-Ríkilát, Jarlmann-Þorbjörg) follows. Hermann kills the old king and regains his bride, while Jarlmann kills the giantess in their bridal bed. On returning to Frakkland, Jarlmann marries the king's sister Herborg and receives half of the kingdom. It survives in many manuscripts, with examples in North America in Cornell University (Fiske Collection) and John Hopkins, Baltimore, as well as in Iceland and Scandinavia. It was printed first in 1819 (but in a variant form to that here). Any manuscript in Old Norse is of the utmost rarity. No medieval Icelandic saga manuscript is recorded as ever appearing on the open market, and the very last available example of an even remotely similar text, a mid-fourteenth-century Icelandic Lives of the Apostles, olim Phillipps MS. 10442), sold Sothebys, 30 November 1965, lot 17, to the Icelandic government. Moreover, later copies of such material in Old Norse have been all but absent from the market, with only a handful app