Saxo Grammaticus

Danish scholar, historian, and writer

• Born: c. 1150
• Birthplace: Probably Zealand, Denmark
• Died: c. 1220
• Place of death: Unknown

Saxo Grammaticus, Denmark’s most prominent medieval scholar and its first national historian, wrote one of the earliest chronicles of Danish legend and history. The only great writer of Latin prose in Denmark before the Reformation, Saxo is the most important source of information about early Danish literature and history.

Early Life

The meager details known of the life of Saxo Grammaticus (SAK-soh gruh-MA-tuh-kuhs) have been gleaned from his own history and from the writings of others. Since the accuracy of the external accounts is questionable, however, Saxo himself remains a scholarly mystery.

Based on careful research, scholars have concluded that Saxo was born into a noble family on the island of Zealand in Denmark. If the thirteenth century Zealand chronicle’s mention of a Saxo Longus (the Tall) alludes to the historian, height is the only physical characteristic known about him. Saxo himself tells his readers that his grandfather and father served as soldiers in the army of Valdemar I, who reigned from 1157 to 1182.

It is from other, much later, sources that the name Grammaticus (the Lettered) arises. The fourteenth century Jutland chronicle is the first to assign Saxo the title. The writer of his epitome (1431) and the first edition of his work both retain the reference. This surname apparently refers to Saxo’s conspicuous scholarship and elaborate style of Latin composition.

Saxo’s complex Latin sentences have led scholars to conjecture that his education must have been meticulous, for in his day Latin was the language of the learned. Saxo was no doubt educated in the three major areas of grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric. His stories, literary allusions, and themes suggest that he studied the classics and Vergil’s poetry, as well as such authors as Livy, Martianus Capella, Plato, Cicero, Boethius, and Valerius Maximus. He may also have had formal training in law. He seems to have been slightly familiar with spoken Icelandic and marginally acquainted with German. He may have gone to Paris to complete his education, or perhaps to Germany or England.

Scholars have also debated Saxo’s profession. Saxo describes himself as one of the retinue of Absalon, archbishop of Lund from 1179 to 1201, but fails to say what services he actually performed, no doubt assuming that his readers would understand. Sven Aggesen, a slightly older contemporary, mentions Saxo as his contubernalis (literally, tent mate), but Sven’s exact meaning is unclear because he may have meant anything from a military comrade to a fellow member of Absalon’s retinue. In his will, Absalon mentions a clerk by the name of Saxo, but even if this reference is to Saxo Grammaticus (and it has been debated), scholars are uncertain whether this designation was applied to clerics or to laymen. To add to the confusion, the first edition of Saxo’s work lists him as “sometime Head” of the cathedral church at Roskilde. One scholar has even suggested that he may have been Absalon’s official historian. Such uncertainty has divided scholars; some believe that he was a monk serving as the archbishop’s secretary, and some argue that he was a secular clerk. What is certain, and what Saxo himself tells his readers, is that his patron, Absalon, encouraged him to record in Latin the history of Denmark, the work for which Saxo is famous.

Life’s Work

In Gesta Danorum (1514; The History of the Danes, 1894, 1980-1981), sometimes called Historia Danica, Saxo traces the lives of the Danes and their kings from their eponymous founder, Dan, to 1187 and Gorm III. The composition of the text occupied him from about 1185 until 1208; he spent from about 1208 until his death revising it and writing the preface.

Saxo had many reasons for composing The History of the Danes. His primary purpose, stated in the first sentence of his preface, was to glorify his country, then approaching the zenith of its political influence. Aware of Vergil’s glorification of Rome, Saxo was eager to present his country folk with a similar monument to their own great past and recent accomplishments. Furthermore, the appearance of his history some fifty years after Denmark’s civil war (1147-1157) was designed to reconcile peoples only lately reunified. Comments on his fellow Danes reveal that he also hoped to civilize his country and to provide evidence of its rich culture to the rest of the world.

Saxo did not use only one source for his history. He drew on ancient epic poems, folktales, popular tradition, inscriptions, lists of Danish kings, and oral lays of Denmark. He also borrowed from Icelandic sagas and Norse mythology. Some scholars have even recognized borrowings from Russian stories in the early books. For contemporary history, Saxo’s chief source was probably his mentor, Absalon. Saxo also borrowed from foreign colleagues, directly quoting Dudo, Saint Bede the Venerable, and Paul the Deacon, all medieval historians. He may also have known of Jordanes, Gregory of Tours, Wittekind, Helmold, Giraldus Cambrensis (Gerald de Barri), and Geoffrey of Monmouth. It is clear that Saxo reworked everything he borrowed in order to shed greater glory on Denmark.

In literary style, Saxo again made use of others, this time pagan Latin authors of the Silver Age and of late antiquity. Justin and Curtius Rufus were important to him. Martianus Capella provided the Latin meters he used. His favorite author, however, was Valerius Maximus. Saxo’s writing, characterized by moralizing and artificial cleverness, imitates the pointed style of Silver Age Latin.

Saxo’s style, in fact, is another point of contention among scholars. Some say the style is vigorous and compelling; others accuse him of pomposity. Some find him biased against the early kings, Norwegians, Germans, and Swedes, and prejudiced in favor of Icelanders and Zealanders. Others argue that far from being naïve and uncritical, he contrived to use his stories to give meaning to the ancient past as the precedent for his glorious contemporary Denmark. Still others have discovered an elaborate four-part division to The History of the Danes: Books 1 to 4 deal with the world before Christ, books 5 to 8 discuss the period up to Denmark’s conversion to Christianity, books 9 to 12 examine the growth of the new Church, and books 13 to 16 tell of events after the Church is firmly established. Another scholar has shown that Saxo inserts a visit to the Underworld halfway through his history, much as Vergil did in the Aeneid (c. 29-19 b.c.e.; English translation, 1553).

The story of most interest to students of English literature in Saxo’s chronicle has to do with how a Danish prince named Amleth wreaked vengeance on his uncle for the murder of his father. This tale represents the earliest known form of the plot of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet (pr. c. 1600-1601), and Saxo was the first to set it down in writing. All the evidence indicates that Saxo’s tale is not literary fiction but a literary reworking of a Danish oral legend dating from at least the tenth century. Saxo expanded it with details of the story known in Iceland.

Though many scholars have admired his pioneer achievements, Saxo has also been sharply criticized for his Latin style, his naïve recounting of fables and fantasies, and even his choice of Latin as a linguistic medium. Historians have found little of value in the first nine books and have disputed the historic reliability of the later ones.

Yet Saxo has left his mark on literature and history for a number of reasons. First, The History of the Danes exemplifies the literary renaissance of the twelfth century. Saxo’s chronicle is one of only two important sources for this period, the other being the account of Sven Aggesen. The latter’s history of Denmark, however, is inferior to Saxo’s in its scope, its Latin, and its literary background, and thus is of less importance. Prior to Saxo, Danish heroic poetry had been preserved only by oral tradition. Many of the tales in The History of the Danes are unrecorded elsewhere. Some of Saxo’s sources are known only through allusions in his work. Consequently, mythologists and folklorists are indebted to Saxo for his preservation of all of these.

Saxo may have had little effect on his own time. His work was not immediately popular; in fact, it was mostly forgotten for three hundred years, surviving only in an epitome and a few manuscripts. The epitome reveals that Saxo’s writing was considered to be difficult to comprehend. In the early sixteenth century, however, Christiern Pedersen, canon of Lund and Denmark’s greatest Humanist, prepared a manuscript of Saxo that was published in 1514 in Paris by the renowned printer Jodocus Badius Ascensius. The Renaissance writers were greatly interested in Saxo. As a consequence, editions of Saxo became popular, and libraries throughout Europe boasted copies of his history. Desiderius Erasmus praised Saxo’s force of eloquence. One of François de Belleforest’s translations of Saxo is generally considered to have been Shakespeare’s immediate source for Hamlet. Shakespeare himself may have had some knowledge of Saxo’s work.

Saxo’s work is now known almost completely from the first printed version. No complete manuscript survives. The most important fragment, four quarto leaves on parchment with fifteen lines to a page, is from Angers. Notes and corrections on these pages have been argued to have been written by Saxo’s own hand or by the hand of one of his scribes.

Saxo’s death probably occurred about 1220. Evidence in his history shows that he died before he completed the revision of his work.

Significance

Saxo was ideally suited to write the history of Denmark. He was well educated in the ways of the Church, in the language and literature of the Romans, and in the culture and literature of his native land, and he used all these resources to praise his people. Like Absalon, Saxo favored a strong, nationalistic monarchy, with the king controlling the legislative, military, and ecclesiastical branches. Through his History of the Danes he was able to emphasize the Church’ and especially Absalon’ importance in national reunification. His knowledge of Latin and the genre of the Medieval History/Middle Ages allowed him to choose a medium ideal for his purpose of tracing the royal family to the founding of the kingdom, much as Vergil had done in the case of Caesar Augustus in the Aeneid. By showing the king to be one with his country folk, Saxo hoped to reconcile hostile factions of people and to instill national pride. Though he despised all foreign influence and praised ancient Norse ideals, Saxo was so well versed in the literary culture of his age that he could construct a work using a Latin (and therefore foreign) framework and intertwine cultural and literary features from other peoples with his own country’s heritage. In this way he hoped to create a work that would place Denmark among the learned civilizations of the world.

Medieval scholars and historians have also benefited from Saxo’s history. Because Saxo chose to borrow from many different sources, many of which no longer exist, mythologists and students of folklore have a clearer picture of the evolution, transmission, and migration of certain legends and sagas. Students of Shakespeare gain a deeper appreciation of Hamlet through the story of Amleth. Finally, Saxo reveals important information about his own time, observations that would have been lost to subsequent generations if not for The History of the Danes.

Bibliography

Benoit-Dusausoy, Annick, and Guy Fontaine, eds. History of European Literature. Translated by Michael Wooff. New York: Routledge, 2000. A critical history of European literature, with chapters on Saxo, Shakespeare, and dozens of others.

Dumézil, Georges. From Myth to Fiction: The Saga of Hadingus. Translated by Derek Coltman. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973. The introduction provides a clear synopsis of Saxo’s life. Though the book deals with only one personage from The History of the Danes, the arguments also provide insight into other Saxonian legends.

Hansen, William F. Saxo Grammaticus and the Life of Hamlet: A Translation, History, and Commentary. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983. The main part of the book is concerned with Saxo’s style and the story of Hamlet. Significant parts also deal with Saxo’s entire work. The general reader will find the text informative and easy to read. Includes useful notes, bibliography, and index. Illustrated.

Lausten, Martin Schwarz. A Church History of Denmark. Translated by Frederick H. Cryer. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2002. Provides a comprehensive survey of the history of the church in Denmark a topic critical to Saxo’s own History from Viking paganism to the Viking contact with Christians and Christian culture abroad, and from the Christian conversion in the tenth century to the present. Includes a bibliography and an index.

Mitchell, P. M. A History of Danish Literature. 2d ed. New York: Kraus-Thomson Organization, 1971. A reproduction of the Angers fragment is included in this volume. The author places Saxo in perspective with the other writers of Danish literature. Appropriate for the general reader. Illustrations and an extensive bibliography.

Oakley, Stewart. A Short History of Denmark. New York: Praeger, 1972. Though Saxo is not treated extensively, the author puts him in historical perspective. Contains illustrations, an index, and suggestions for further reading.

Saxo Grammaticus. The First Nine Books of the Danish History of Saxo Grammaticus. Translated by Oliver Elton. Edited by Frederick York Powell. 1894. Reprint. Nendeln, Liechtenstein: Kraus, 1967. Footnotes in the introduction will help mainly the specialist. Footnotes in the text of the translation will be more valuable to the general reader.

Saxo Grammaticus. The History of the Danes. Translated by Peter Fisher. Edited by Hilda Ellis Davidson. 2 vols. 1979-1980. Reprint. Rochester, N.Y.: D. S. Brewer, 1996. The translation is lively and eminently readable. The introductions in both volumes will be extremely helpful for the general reader and the more advanced researcher. Summarizes Saxo’s life, his place in Danish literature, the history of his text, and the history of scholarship on his work. Useful bibliography.

Taylor, Marion A. A New Look at the Old Sources of Hamlet. Paris: Mouton, 1968. The author deals only with Saxo’s story of Hamlet but is conscientious in showing more than Danish and Roman influence. The footnotes are fairly specialized. The bibliography, however, will be of some use to the general reader.