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Arthur of the Northeast: The Old Swedish Herr Ivan Redraws the King Arthur of Chrétien’s Yvain

In the last half-decade, scholars have begun to update long-held, mostly unfavorable opinions about the literary qualities and cultural importance of the group of three early fourteenth-century Old Swedish verse-romances collectively known to scholars as the Eufemiavisor, after their likely patron, the German-born Queen Eufemia of Norway (r. 1299-1312). For its part, the 1303 Herr Ivan--a full-length verse translation of Chretien de Troyes's Arthurian masterpiece Yvain, ou le Chevalier au Lion, and probably the first of the Eufemiavisor to be written--has long been disparaged as a rather mediocre, unambitious romance that is sometimes "bereft of sparkle" (Layher 2011, 140) and which neither captures the thematic and rhetorical nuances of its primary source, Yvain, nor succeeds in creating any unifying thematic or ideological programs of its own.1 The important conclusions of Sofia Loden's 2012 Stockholm University dissertation on Herr Ivan serve as an overdue corrective to such views, and are emblematic of rapidly shifting scholarly attitudes. As she observes, Herr Ivan is "a coherent and engaged interpretation that does not misinterpret its sources but interprets them for the sake of intrinsic coherence" (Loden 2012, 285), and a romance that succeeds in its program "to present a set of ideological and aesthetic values" (284) to the high-ranking Swedish aristocracy that made up its target audience. (2) Among the central thematic features of the Old Swedish text is its program presenting model political behaviors suitable for emulation by noble audience members. In fact, the Old Swedish text delivers a much more coherent and positive picture of right rule and the ideal relationships that should exist between individuals sharing political bonds than had Chretien's often morally and politically ambiguous Yrain. (3) While in Herr Ivan, such ideal political conduct manifests itself most visibly in the interactions among the text's most central characters--that is, the hero, Ivan, his wife, Laudine, and her chief lady-in-waiting, Lunete--this essay will focus on a figure who occupies relatively little narrative space in the tale, namely King Arthur. But while Arthur's appearances are quite limited, just as they are in the vast majority of Arthurian romances from medieval Europe that took their generic inspiration from the Arthurian narratives of Chretien de Troyes, these appearances are not insignificant to the overall fabric of the story. Indeed, in Herr Ivan and Train, as in most other Arthurian romances, Arthur serves as the benchmark against whom other kings and rulers are judged, as the courtly and martial norm against whom other knights are evaluated, and as the standard against whom other husbands in political marriages are viewed. As this essay will demonstrate, the Herr Ivan poet skillfully and consequently redraws the much-less-than-perfect Arthur of Chretien's Yvain to create a more perfect Arthur who embodies the qualities of an ideal king and feudal lord. In so doing, the Herr Ivan poet fashions with his northeastern King Arthur a character who is in harmony with his translation's larger thematic agenda extolling life at court and the political and social relationships that obtain there. To determine how the Old Swedish poet transforms the Arthur of Chretien's Yvain, this essay will consider Arthur's performance in several key appearances. These include: his retreat to the bedchamber during Pentecost festivities at his court; his role in convincing the hero to ride with the Round Table knights for a year in tournaments; his behavior at Ivan/Yvain's temporary tent-court prior to the hero's descent into madness in the forest; and his activities as judge in the Black Thorn inheritance dispute. But first, let us turn to very beginning of the tale, the prologue, where the first mention of Arthur is made. THE HERR IVAN PROLOGUE: ESTABLISHING ARTHUR AS AN EXEMPLARY FIGURE Immediately in those opening lines of the story that function as a kind of prologue in both the Old French original and the Old Swedish translation, Herr Ivan begins its presentation of a much more clearly defined Arthur than the one who emerges early on in Yvain. …