Partalopa saga (abbreviated Partal.) is counted among the translated riddarasǫgur, i.e. the riddarasǫgur for which a foreign (French) source ean be identified. The source for Partal. is the French romance Partonopeus de Blois, either in the surviving version or in a lost version. The surviving version has been assumed to have been composed c. 1182-85.
Partonopeus de Blois is a roman courtois showing characteristics of both of the two main types into which this genre is generally divided, romans d'antiquité and romans bretons.
Partal. has been edited once before - by Oskar Klockhoff - and published in Uppsala in 1877 (Upsala Universitets Årsskrift).
Klockhoff, however, knew of only 5 manuscripts of the saga, and even though Klockhoffs transcription of the main text (A in the present edition) is very accurate, a new edition taking account of all the surviving manuscripts is called for, not least because Partal. is of interest not only for Norse literary history but also for the study af medieval literature in a wider European perspective.