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

For its part, the 1303 Herr Ivan-a full-length verse translation of chrétien 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 Lodén'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" (Lodén 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 chrétien's often morally and politically ambiguous Yvain.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.