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.