Cinderella in Old Norse Literature

Abstract

Although ATU 510A, ‘Cinderella’, is known to have ancient origins, it was widely thought that the ash-name did not become a feature of the tale type until Giambattista Basile’s ‘La Gatta cenerentola’ (The Ashy Cat) in the seventeenth century. However, it is preceded in this regard by a little-known fourteenth-century Icelandic romance, Vilmundar saga viðutan (The Saga of Vilmundr the Outsider). Using this saga as a starting point, this article traces the literary transmission of ATU 510A through the extant corpus of Old Norse literature, with particular reference to the development of three key aspects of ‘Cinderella’: the persecuted heroine; the lost-and-found shoe; and the cinder-name.

Notes

Notes

1 The standard edition of Vilmundar saga is currently Agnete Loth’s, which is in semi-diplomatic orthography with a running English summary on each page (Loth 1962–65, 4: 137–201). A new normalized edition and first English translation by the present author is forthcoming, and quotations from Vilmundar saga will be taken from this edition, for the primary reason that normalized orthography is more accessible than semi-diplomatic orthography. Because the text of the two editions is based on the same manuscripts, meaning that the two texts are almost identical, references to the corresponding pages in Loth’s edition will also be provided, as it is the only critical edition of the saga currently in print.

2 Kievan Rus’ features as a location in the historically minded Icelandic sagas of kings, written in the thirteenth century, as a ‘distant and exotic but definitely civilised kingdom that interacts with the Norse world on fairly familiar terms’ (Shafer 2009, 140). Sometimes, this occurs within the specific context of its historical relations with Scandinavian kingdoms in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, such as the marriage between the Swedish princess Ingigerðr Óláfsdóttir (also known as St Anna of Novgorod) and Yaroslav I, the Grand Prince of Rus’, in 1019 (on the representation of Yaroslav in Old Norse literature, see Cross 1929). In many of the Icelandic romances of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Kievan Rus’ features as the kingdom of origin of protagonists or other important characters, but even in these fictionalized depictions, reflexes of the historical tradition are to be found; most notably, outside of those historical texts which discuss the historical Princess Ingigerðr, the name ‘Ingigerðr’ is only found in these romances, where it is almost invariably used as the name of a fictional princess of Kievan Rus’.

3 In this passage, Loth amends smáslys (‘small misfortune’) to stórslys (‘large misfortune’), but the original manuscript reading is also valid and has been retained in the present author’s edition and therefore in this quotation.

4 In accordance with Icelandic convention, Icelandic scholars will be referred to throughout by given name and patronymic, and they will also be alphabetized according to their given names in the list of references.

5 It is worth mentioning that, in medieval European literature, the plot devices associated with twinning did not always involve biological twins. The widespread tale of ‘Amicus and Amelius’, which exists in numerous versions from across medieval Europe, and which is itself classified as ATU 516C (and is related to ATU 303, ‘The Twin Brothers’), is a prominent example of dual protagonists of identical appearance who might be regarded as symbolic twins, but were not born to the same parents.

6 An English translation of ‘Eskja’ can be found opposite a facing text in Cook and Tveitane (1979, 44–63).

7 An English translation of ‘Le Fresne’ can be found in Hanning and Ferrante (1995, 73–91).

8 Eskja’s name is ‘a feminine coinage based on askr’, or ‘ash (tree)’ (Cook and Tveitane 1979, 50, n. 2).

9 Hesla’s name is ‘a feminine coinage based on hasl’, or ‘hazel’ (Cook and Tveitane 1979, 56, n. 1). The contrast between the fertile hazel and the barren ash is raised in both the French poem and the Norse prose translation.

10 The plot will also be familiar as a form of the Griselda tale (ATU 887) that appears in the Decameron, Petrarch’s De obedientia ac fide uxoria mythologia, and Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale.

11 For an examination of the dynamics of twinning in ‘Le Fresne’ and other lais by Marie, see Bruckner (2006).

12 The wicked stepmother would certainly not have been out of place in an Icelandic legendary romance—a prominent example can be found in the figure of Lúða in Hjálmþés saga ok Ölvis (The Saga of Hjálmþér and Ölvir), which is roughly contemporary with Vilmundar saga. An English translation of Hjálmþés saga can be found in O’Connor (2006, 115–74).

13 An English translation of Ragnars saga can be found in Schlauch (1930, 185–256).

14 In addition to the numerous medieval sources which attest him, Ragnarr loðbrók has also achieved newfound fame as the protagonist of the History Channel series Vikings.

15 As Aðalheiður Guðmundsdóttir notes, Rory McTurk had previously spotted an indirect connection between ‘Le Fresne’ (rather than ‘Eskja’) and an Icelandic text, this time Geirmundar þáttr heljarskinns (The Short Story of Geirmundr the Dark-Skinned) (McTurk 1997; cf. Aðalheiður Guðmundsdóttir 2014, 125).

16 The two earliest extant manuscripts containing Hálfdanar saga Eysteinssonar, AM 586 4to and AM 343 a 4to, both from the latter half of the fifteenth century, also happen to be two of the three earliest extant manuscripts containing Vilmundar saga. An English translation of Hálfdanar saga can be found in Hermann Pálsson and Edwards (1985, 171–98).

17 In the Motif-Index, H114, ‘Identification by glove’, is in fact listed as a separate motif to the slipper test (H36.1). The sole example provided of H114 is the Middle English romance Sir Degaré, in which a glove, with which the hero had been abandoned as an infant, serves to prove the hero’s identity to his mother, just in time to prevent them from consummating their incestuous marriage.

18 In neither Vilmundar saga nor Hálfdanar saga is the garment a ‘perfect fit’ for the princess in a physical sense—it is sufficient for her to be the owner of the item, and she is never specified to be the only person on whom the garment will fit, nor does she need to undergo a test to prove that it does belong to her.

19 Rooth derived the interpretation of the Greek term, along with its possible feline association, from Philip Argenti and H. J. Rose (Argenti and Rose 1949, 1: 443, n. 1).

20 Guðmundur Andrésson’s 1683 dictionary of Icelandic suggests that buska could refer to the daughter of a convicted outlaw (Guðmundur Andrésson 1683, 22). This definition also implies a derogatory reference to the woman’s social class and status as an outsider.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jonathan Y. H. Hui

Jonathan Hui recently completed his PhD at the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic, University of Cambridge, UK. His edition of Vilmundar saga viðutan is forthcoming with the Viking Society for Northern Research.