''Saulus saga ok Nikanors'' (also known as ''Sálus saga og Nikanors'') 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 ...

. Its style is said to combine that of a romance as well as that of Sagas of Icelanders. Thematically, the saga discusses issues of power, embodied by Nikanor's sister's name, Potentiana.

Synopsis

Kalinke and Mitchell summarise the saga thus:

Composed in Iceland, presumably in the fourteenth century. After a duel nearly to the death as a result of a chess game at the court of the Roman emperor, Prince Sálus of Galicia and Duke Nikanor of Bár become blood brothers and are involved in a series of tremendous battles in order to obtain Potentiana, Nikanor's sister, as Sálus' bride. Nikanor ultimately marries Luneta, daughter of King Benjamin of Akaia in Grikkland. There are many classical and Biblical elements and allusions.

Manuscripts

Kalinke and Mitchell identified the following manuscripts of the saga:

Derived ''rímur''

Finnur Sigmundsson's catalogue of ''

rímur In Icelandic literature, a ''ríma'' (, literally "a rhyme", pl. ''rímur'', ) is an epic poem written in any of the so-called ''rímnahættir'' (, "rímur meters"). They are rhymed, they alliterate and consist of two to four lines per stanza. T ...

'' lists three different ''rímur'' based on the saga which Finnur knew in manuscripts in public collections, and reports rumours of six lost ''rímur'' on the subject. The oldest is ''Sálus rímur og Níkanórs'', dated to the first half of the fifteenth century by Haukur Þorgeirsson; the poem comprises 593 stanzas in eleven ''rímur'' and was edited by Finnur Jónsson.Finnur Jónsson (ed.),
Rímnasafn: Samling af de ældste islandske rimer
', Samfund til udgivelse af gammel nordisk litteratur, 35, 2 vols (Copenhagen: Møller and Jørgensen, 1905–22), II 687–769.

Sample of ''Sálus rímur og Níkanórs''

Editions and translations

* H. Erlendsson & Einar Þórðarson, eds. "Sagan af Salusi og Nikanor", in
Fjórar riddarasögur
' (Reykjavik, 1852), pp. 34-92. Machine-readable tex
here
opular reading edition.* Agnete Loth (ed.), ''Late Medieval Icelandic Romances'', Editiones Arnamagæanae, series B, 20–24, 5 vols (Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1962–65), II, 3-91. he principal scholarly edition.

References

{{Chivalric sagas Chivalric sagas Icelandic literature Old Norse literature