Saxo Grammaticus

• 1. Introduction

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  Archbishop Absalon's will contained an unusual instruction for his clerk Saxo Grammaticus. Return two borrowed books to the monastery of Sorø, and consider a small debt of two and a half marks of silver forgiven. Absalon died on the 21st of March 1201. That parting gesture is one of the few intimate glimpses history has preserved of a man who spent his life documenting the deeds of others. Saxo's sixteen-book Gesta Danorum became the earliest full account of Danish history, spanning from legendary origins to the late twelfth century. Within those pages lay the legend of Amleth, a tale of revenge that would eventually reach Shakespeare's stage. Saxo was born in Zealand around 1150 and likely died around 1220. His name was common enough in medieval Denmark, but the title "Grammaticus," meaning "the learned," would follow him through history. The preface that opens Gesta Danorum was written around 1216. By then Saxo was working under Anders Sunesen, the Archbishop who had succeeded Absalon at Lund.

• 2. A Warrior's Education

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  Sven Aggesen, a Danish nobleman and author, described Saxo as his contubernalis, meaning tent-comrade. Scholars link that word to service in the Hird, the royal guard, taking it as evidence that both men may have served there as soldiers. That military connection is one of two paths scholars follow in understanding Saxo. The other leads to the church: a Saxo appears on a list of clergy at Lund. A Dean Saxo died in 1190, though that date does not fit what else is known about his life.

  His father and grandfather, Saxo writes, were recognized frequenters of the war camp of King Valdemar I. He described himself as bound by "the ancient right of hereditary service," placing himself within a warrior tradition two generations deep.

  Paris was a common destination for the sons of great Danish families who needed Latin training. Whether Saxo studied there is unknown, but his Latin was clearly the product of substantial education. Some scholars argue the title "Grammaticus" points to formal schooling; others link it to the elaborate quality of his prose rather than any academic credential. His Latin has been seen as more akin to legal training than to ecclesiastical training, and traces of parallelism appear in his poetry. The Jutland Chronicle is the first document to place him in Zealand. It was also the first to call him Grammaticus. That designation's full weight would only become clear when Erasmus read his Latin, centuries after his death.

• 3. A History for the Fatherland

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  Saxo wrote that his goal was "to glorify our fatherland." He shaped the work in the tradition of Virgil's Aeneid, and he may also have drawn on Plato, Cicero, and Geoffrey of Monmouth. Absalon, Archbishop of Lund, had urged him to take on the project, and that patronage shaped both what Saxo wrote and the sources he could access.

  Letters carved on rocks and stone were among his sources, alongside ancient volumes and the oral tales of Icelanders. He also drew on Absalon's spoken account of events the Archbishop had personally witnessed.

  The work is thought to have been started around 1185, once Sven Aggesen had published his own history. Sixteen books would eventually result. They cover four phases: the Danes before Christ, the era after Christ, Christian Denmark, and finally Lund and Saxo's own lifetime. The scholar Friis-Jensen described the work as "a product of Saxo's own mind and times." What that mind produced in the earliest sections of the history would puzzle and fascinate scholars for centuries.

• 4. Gods, Heroes, and Warlike Values

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  Dan, the first king of Denmark in Saxo's telling, had a brother named Angul. Angul, Saxo explains, gave his name to the Angles, drawing the English people into the same mythical family as the Danes.

  The first eight books share a quality with the work of Snorri Sturluson, Saxo's Icelandic contemporary. Giants and the gods of the Scandinavian pantheon populate these chapters alongside the earliest Danish kings.

  Harald, a legendary king of the Danes, was taught the arts of warfare by Odin. That alliance ended in betrayal: Odin killed Harald and carried him to Valhalla. Saxo's gods are not always benevolent; they appear as treacherous figures, as capable of destroying their champions as protecting them.

  King Frode's reign of peace receives a low assessment in Saxo's telling. His satisfaction only returns when King Knut restores the ancestral customs of the Danes. Warriors stand above peacemakers throughout Gesta Danorum.

  Saxo's account of the story of Thyri is far more elaborate and fantastic than the same tale as rendered by other Scandinavian sources. That tendency toward elaboration, which scholars call euhemerism, has drawn criticism. The work's mythical character would occupy scholars for centuries before Kurt Johannesson began to open new approaches.

• 5. From Saxo to Shakespeare

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  Christiern Pedersen, a Canon of Lund, worked with the scholar Jodocus Badius Ascensius to print Saxo's history early in the sixteenth century. That collaboration marked the first major step toward establishing the significance of Gesta Danorum. From that point, knowledge of the work began to circulate through European scholarly communities.

  An oral tale of a son avenging his murdered father lay at the heart of what Saxo had preserved as the Amleth story. That tale, embedded in the mythical books, had traveled far enough by the sixteenth century to reach Shakespeare.

  Oliver Elton was the first to translate the initial nine books into English. He wrote that Saxo was the first writer produced by Denmark, a judgment that placed him above all rivals for that designation.

  Erasmus encountered Saxo's prose and wondered how "a Dane of that age got so great power of eloquence." R. W. Chambers offered a more mixed assessment, calling the writing "difficult and bombastic, but always amusing Latin." Those two verdicts differed sharply, and they were not the only area of disagreement. The differences between Saxo's portrayals of Norse history and mythology and those of his Norwegian and Icelandic contemporaries had still not been satisfactorily explained.

• 6. Rethinking Saxo

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  Kurt Johannesson's studies of Gesta Danorum changed how scholars approached the text. Instead of focusing mainly on mythology, Johannesson examined the work's broader design, opening new ways of understanding what Saxo had been trying to do.

  Sigurd Kværndrup, inspired by Johannesson's examination of the four cardinal virtues in Gesta Danorum, took the analysis further. He and others concluded that Saxo was not merely distorting older Norse and Baltic traditions but creating something new. That creation was attuned to Denmark's ambitions as the thirteenth century approached: the drive to strengthen institutions and engage in the Northern Crusades.

  The historian André Muceniecks argued for a precise composition sequence. The historical books came first, the mythical books were written after Absalon's death, and the preface was composed last. That ordering treats the mythical material as a later addition, written once Saxo was free of a patron whose interests lay primarily in recent events.

  The Chronicon Roskildense, a Latin chronicle completed around 1143, predates Gesta Danorum by decades. The other competing text was Sven Aggesen's Brevis historia regum Dacie. That work covered the years 300 through 1185 and was probably finished in 1186 or 1187. Modern Danes still commonly regard Saxo as their first national historian, though those earlier works complicate the claim.

  Saxo's preface extended warm appreciation to both of his Archbishops and to the reigning King Valdemar II. That gesture bound a history of legendary kings and Norse mythology to the patronage of a living royal house.