''Nikulás saga leikara'' is a medieval Icelandic

romance saga The ''riddarasögur'' (literally 'sagas of knights', also known in English as 'chivalric sagas', 'romance-sagas', 'knights' sagas', 'sagas of chivalry') are Norse prose sagas of the romance genre. Starting in the thirteenth century with Norse tr ...

Synopsis

Keren Wick summarised the saga thus:

''Nikulás saga leikara'' ... tells the story of Nikulás, king of
Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia a ...
. His foster-father, Earl Svívari, convinces him to stop playing with magic and try to win Princess Dorma of
Constantinople la, Constantinopolis ota, قسطنطينيه , alternate_name = Byzantion (earlier Greek name), Nova Roma ("New Rome"), Miklagard/Miklagarth (Old Norse), Tsargrad ( Slavic), Qustantiniya (Arabic), Basileuousa ("Queen of Cities"), Megalopolis (" ...
as a bride. Svívari makes a secret betrothal with Dorma, contrary to her father's wishes. Nikulás then travels to Constantinople where he poses as a merchant in order to insinuate himself into the
Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...
court. Nikulás meets with Dorma secretly, and the couple escape from Constantinople. Valdimar's Scandinavian mercenaries capture Dorma by employing magic, but Nikulás re-captures his bride, also using magic. The final battle is precluded by Valdimar's accidental killing of his own mercenaries. Valdimar accepts Nikulás, and Nikulás becomes king over Constantinople upon Valdimar's death.

Manuscripts

The saga survives in no medieval manuscripts, but does seem once to have been part of the now fragmentary fifteenth-century manuscript Stockholm, Royal Library, Perg. fol. nr 7. The saga does survive in over sixty post-medieval manuscripts, however, in two main recensions.Wick, Keren H. 1996. An edition and study of Nikulás saga leikara. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Leeds. .

Editions and translations

The saga was twice printed in popular editions: in

Winnipeg Winnipeg () is the capital and largest city of the province of Manitoba in Canada. It is centred on the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine rivers, near the longitudinal centre of North America. , Winnipeg had a city population of 749,6 ...

by the Heimskringlu Prentstofa (1889) and in Reykjavík by Helgi Árnason (1912). This makes it an interesting example of Canadian-Icelandic literature, and an unusually late example of Icelandic readerships for printed romance sagas. * Wick, Keren H. 1996
An edition and study of Nikulás saga leikara
Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Leeds. (Includes edition and translation.)

References

Chivalric sagas Icelandic literature Old Norse literature {{Iceland-saga-stub