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The Legend of Pallas's Tomb and its Medieval Scandinavian Transmission

Pallas, son of Evander, was an ally of Aeneas, and died heroically in combat against turnus in book 10 of the Aeneid. From at least the first half of the twelfth century, possibly earlier, a legend began to develop around the discovery of his body, perfectly preserved, in Rome, in strange contrast to the account of the Aeneid, where the body is burned. Most of these accounts note that the body was gigantic, in addition to being intact, but that soon after the tomb was opened, the body decayed as normal. While accounts of the excavation of a renowned historical figure were not uncommon in the later Middle Ages, no similar legend seems to have had a comparable breadth of circulation and versatility of use throughout Europe, from Iceland and Norway to Italy and Spain. the legend of Pallas’s tomb is highly flexible and self-contained, and it appears in different contexts in chronicles, romances, histories, and annals, in Latin and in a variety of vernaculars throughout late medieval and early modern Europe. the popularity of the legend owes much to its ability to be fitted into a variety of texts with different subjects and concerns. this modularity, in turn, can be partly attributed to the details of the legend itself, the distinctive combination of sources, information, and narratives that are used to construct the complete text. the goal of this study is to explore the use and transmission of this legend in several medieval Icelandic and Norwegian sources in the context of its full transmission through medieval and early modern texts. Despite its popularity, very little scholarship has dealt with the legend and its transmission, and no study has been written focusing upon it.1 No scholars seem