Saxo
Saxo Grammaticus is the Danish historian who composed the Gesta Danorum, a monumental Latin chronicle of Denmark's kings and legends.
Saxo Grammaticus is the Danish historian who composed the Gesta Danorum, a monumental Latin chronicle of Denmark's kings and legends. Of Saxo himself "little is known but what he himself indicates, though much doubtful supposition has gathered round his name" (Gesta Danorum, Life of Saxo). He was a cleric, possibly of the Chapter of Roskild, though the identification with a certain provost of that name "lacks real evidence" (Gesta Danorum, Life of Saxo). His family may have included a Saxo who served as one of Waldemar's admirals, which would place his kin among the "King's men" (Gesta Danorum, Life of Saxo).
Archbishop Absalon of Lund commissioned the work following his elevation in 1179 (Gesta Danorum, The History). Saxo styled himself "the least" of Absalon's followers, claiming "all the rest refused the task," though these "expressions of modesty" are understood as conventional humility rather than literal truth (Gesta Danorum, The History). Absalon's death in 1201 set a terminus for the project, and much of the later narrative draws directly on the archbishop's personal memoirs (Gesta Danorum, The History). Sweyn, too, speaks of Saxo "with respect" and implicitly delegates to him the task of filling gaps in the record (Gesta Danorum, Saxo's Position).
All sixty citations derive from a single source, the Gesta Danorum, but they divide into two distinct registers: the editorial apparatus surrounding Saxo as author, and the analytical commentary treating him as a conduit for Danish tradition.
The editorial material constructs Saxo as a figure about whom remarkably little can be verified. His birth year can only be approximated from internal evidence (Gesta Danorum, Life of Saxo). Whether he was the Roskild provost, whether his grandfather was Waldemar's admiral -- these remain conjectures built on thin evidence centuries after his death (Gesta Danorum, Life of Saxo). The epitome of around 1430 already found Saxo "difficult," complaining that "his style is too obscure on account of the number of terms and sundry poems, which are unfamiliar to modern times" (Gesta Danorum, History of the Work). Christian Pederson's heroic effort to recover the text involved visiting "all the libraries" only to fail to "pull out a Saxo, even covered with beetles, bookworms, mould, and dust" (Gesta Danorum, History of the Work). The beautiful first edition of 1514, produced by Jodocus Badius Ascensius, was "a little triumph of humanism" (Gesta Danorum, History of the Work). Stephanius's 1644 Copenhagen edition brought "immense knowledge of Latin" and "a sharp eye for the text" to bear (Gesta Danorum, History of the Work).
The analytical commentary reveals Saxo as both literary craftsman and vehicle for older tradition. "Saxo's countrymen have praised without stint his remarkable style, for he has a style" (Gesta Danorum, Saxo as a Writer), but that style borrowed heavily from Valerius Maximus, taking "a multitude of phrases, sometimes apt but often crabbed and deformed" (Gesta Danorum, Saxo as a Writer). His treatment of Norse mythology is distinctive: he knows of Thor's journey to the haunt of giant Geirrod and the hurling of the iron bloom, "though he does not seem to have known of the river-feats" (Gesta Danorum, Supernatural Beings). The Volsung incest "is not noticed by Saxo" (Gesta Danorum, Customary Law). There is "a belief in magic throughout Saxo's work, showing how fresh heathendom still was in men's minds and memories" (Gesta Danorum, Magic and Folk-Science).
Saxo's stories draw on folk-tale types that had become detached from their original owners through "lapse of time and the wear of memory" (Gesta Danorum, Folk-Tales). Disguise "plays a great part in the folk-tales used by Saxo" (Gesta Danorum, Folk-Tales), and the Hamlet story includes what seems "an obvious accretion in the original" owed not to Saxo but to his source (Gesta Danorum, Folk-Tales). The Swipdag myth ranks among "the chief mythic tales that concern Saxo" (Gesta Danorum, "T.M."). Hadding's journey to the Underworld is "only half told in Saxo, unluckily," a pattern of abridgement that recurs throughout the work (Gesta Danorum, "T.M."). Sciold appears as "the father of Gram in Saxo, and the son of Sceaf in other older authorities" (Gesta Danorum, "T.M.").
His handling of law and custom preserves traditions of blood revenge -- "one of the strongest links of the family in archaic Teutonic society" that "left deep traces in Saxo" (Gesta Danorum, Customary Law). Marriage customs, too, are well attested, with "birth and beauty" required in a bride by Saxo's heroes (Gesta Danorum, Customary Law). No "strict rule of succession seems to appear in Saxo" for the kingship (Gesta Danorum, Political Institutions). Saxo associated a set of enactments with Frode's conquest of the Ruthenians, showing him "chiefly as a wise and civilising statesman" (Gesta Danorum, Statute Laws). The sword is "the weapon par excellence in Saxo's narrative," while the spear "plays no particular part" -- even Woden's Gungnir is not prominent (Gesta Danorum, War). Maritime warfare features heavily, as "might be expected" given the Viking context (Gesta Danorum, War). The hall with its hangings, fires, and plate "appears in Saxo just as in the Eddic Lays" (Gesta Danorum, Social Life and Manners). The caprices of the Fates, "where one corrects or spoils the others' endowments," surface too (Gesta Danorum, Supernatural Beings).
Appears in: Beings, Entities in Gesta Danorum (Books I-IX), Norse Tradition
On trail: Genealogies