Сага об Ингваре Путешественнике. Текст, перевод, комментарий

Yngvars saga viðfǫrla, often classified as belonging to the Wikingersagas subcategory (“Viking sagas”) of the fornaldarsǫgur (“sagas of antiquity”, also referred to as “mythical-heroic sagas” and “legendary sagas”), is one of the two sagas set entirely in Rus’ and Eastern (South-Eastern) Europe (the other is Eymundar þáttr Hringssonar). Russian translation of Yngvars saga viðfǫrla was first published by Galina Glazyrina (1952–2016) in 2002 in the series The earlies sources for the history of Eastern Europe. The present book is its second edition.

Like other volumes of this serial edition, the book includes the original text (a reprint of Emil Olson’s edition of 1912, pp. 206–255), its Russian translation (pp. 256–277), an ample historical, philological and geographical commentary (pp. 278–392), appendix (inscriptions on Swedish runic stones commemorating the participants of Yngvarr’s campaign – pp. 395–426, prepared by Elena Melnikova), bibliography (pp. 431–447), and indexes (pp. 448–474). Above all, a voluminous introduction (pp. 11–204) contains an extensive study of the saga and the information about Eastern Europe preserved in it. Yngvars saga viðfǫrla, like the legendary sagas in general, had attracted until recently little attention of saga scholars and therefore required a special study of its manuscript tradition, origin, content, transformation of oral tradition in it, correlation with the information contained in runic inscriptions, and historical realities reflected in it. All these and many other questions are discussed in the introduction.

The first section of the introduction is devoted to the manuscript tradition and previous editions of the saga (pp. 11–34). Description of two parchment manuscripts of the mid‑15^th century and eleven paper copies of the 17^th to19^th centuries made it possible to clarify the stemma of the manuscripts that fall into two groups, each of which goes back to one of the parchment manuscripts.

The next section of the introduction contains the discussion of the saga origin and the emergence of the nickname viðfǫrli (“Traveller”) in its title (pp. 35–54). A comparison of the titles of the saga in different manuscripts has shown that Yngvarr started to be called viðfǫrli only in the 17^th century, apparently due to a rethinking of the plot of the saga. Until that time, it was designated simply as Yngvars saga.

The problem of authorship of Yngvars saga viðfǫrla is a debatable issue. It is stated in the final words of the saga that it was written “on the basis of those books that the learned monk Oddr had ordered to be written down according to the stories of wise men”. However, Oddr’s authorship was rejected by Emil Olson. Some seventy years later, Dietrich Hofmann, basing on the analysis of the language of the saga, thoroughly substantiated the attribution of the saga to Oddr and suggested that it was originally written in Latin (Emil Olson had also pointed at the Latin endings of some words, especially geographical names). Hofmann’s conclusions were not accepted by all scholars, and his arguments are again analyzed in the introduction to this book. Glazyrina thought his idea of the existence of a Latin version of the saga, *Vita Yngvari, probably written by Oddr at the end of the twelfth century, convincing. However, the degree and time of its revision in the process of translating it into Icelandic (dated from the late twelfth to the fourteenth century) have practically not been considered by scholars. The composition of this saga, consisting of a prologue, two parts based on different sources, and an epilogue, has not been studied either.