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Title: Saxo Grammaticus: The History of the Danes, Books I-IX : I. English Text; II. Commentary by Hilda Ellis Davidson, Peter Fisher ISBN: 0-85991-502-6 Publisher: Ds Brewer Pub. Date: 01 June, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $39.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (2 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Great stories, but nothing more
Comment: By all means, buy and read this lavish volume. It is the first written acount of the "gesta danorum", the "deeds of the Danes", and it is filled with tales of kings and queens, bravery, treason, and bravery in the face of treason (!).
Just don't think of it as the actual history of Denmark and the Danes. Saxo Grammaticus (who was Danish in spite of the latin-sounding name) was as much a politician as he was a historian, and this is every bit as much a political work as it is an attempt to retell the history of a people. It is written mainly to make us (the Danes) look good, and to suck up to the royal family by making their enemies (including several former kings) look bad.
Sure, the line of Kings is accurate from Gorm the Old onwards (although the dates are sometimes wrong, and the tales of the monarchs' actions and the characterisation of their personalities almost always is), but everything before Gorm is guesswork at best, and most often pure fiction which may or may not have a grain of truth in it.
"Gesta Danorum" is a splendid work, but you'll learn little about actual Danish history from reading it.
Rating: 5
Summary: Latter-Day Nordic Gods and Heroes Rejoice!
Comment: The Danish monk Saxo lived from about 1150 to after 1216. His erudition and command of Latin got him appointed as scribe to the archbishop of Lund (site of Copenhagen), during which time he wrote the sixteen books of the Gesta Danorum. This 'Deeds of the Danes' stands proudly beside Gregory's History of the Franks, the Venerable Bede's History of the English Church and Nation, and the other medieval histories of the European nations. Even more important, it stands beside the Eddas as a main source for scholars of Germanic mythology.
This two volume edition, books one through nine, is translated by Peter Fisher and edited by H. R. Ellis-Davidson, eminent scholar and Grand-Dame of Nordic Scholarship. A scholar's sorce book to be sure, one volume text, the other notes and bibliography, this translation is, unlike earlier translations, very readable.
That out of the way, who should buy this work and why?
Saxo was indeed a man of God, but in his breast throbbed the heart of the Germanic/Nordic warrior-aristocracy in its truest form. The modern reader senses that, on occasion, he may have forgotten both his vows and that he was working for the archbishop.
Book one begins in mythological pre-time with a legendary account of a King Dan, possibly of Greek (Danai) origin , who saved the Danes from the Emperor Augustus. Book nine ends with the life and times of the historical King Gorm III, shortly before Saxo's own time.
Dan's progeny, their retinues and adversaries, include the widest range of boldest heroes, most dastardly scoundrels, moralists, deviants, and about any other type imaginable. Perhaps the best known of these figures is the Amleth (book 3), who feigns madness in order to visit vengeance on the uncle who murdered his father and became his step-father. This material came to Shakespeare by way of a contemporary French author.
One of my personal favorites has to be Starkather, whom Saxo presents to us with some license, but in a most remarkable way.
Starkather, according to the somewhat garbled report, has been condemned by Thor to live three lifetimes, each separated by an act of treachery or betrayal. Books six and seven tell of the old hero during his last lifetime and his long overdue death. He comes on as a leftover from a previous, more heroic time, before the Danish royalty had succumbed to the decadent, courtly (French via 'Teuton') mannerisms that had swept over Saxo's Europe. "Frothi was succeeded by his son, Ingel ... (who)abandoned the patterns of his forbears and surrendered himself wholly to the baits of wanton extravagance. At variance with all that was good and upright, he grasped at vice instead of sound morality, severed the cords of restraint, neglected a sovereign's duties and became a vile slave to riotous living." Further, "(h)is idea of greatness was to collect fatteners of fowls, scullions, frying-pans, all kinds of factories for the palate and various connoisseurs in the art of roasting and spicing meats." A true warrior-king, we learn later, should be pleased to eat his rancid meat uncooked with his troops in the field. Ingel's main vice is, of course, that he hasn't avenged the death of his father.
We read about Starkather's agreeing to stand by a Prince Helgi, who has agreed to meet nine adversaries on the field the day after his wedding night. Starkather stands guard by the bridal chamber. At dawn he finds Helgi slumbering peacefully in the arms of his bride. Reluctant to awaken the prince, he rides out onto the snow-covered plain to meet the opponents. When the nine find him he is covered with snow up to his shoulder blades, apparently half naked because he had removed his cloak to pluck fleas. They ask him if he wants to take them on individually or all together. "Whenever a sorry pack of curs snarls at me ... I usually send them scampering off all together, not one by one." Spaghetti-western script writers, look and learn!
The old Starkather dispatches all nine, but not before he is wounded so severely that his innards are hanging out. A man on a cart stops to tend to the badly bloodied hero. When the latter learns that the man is a bailiff, "he was not content with rejecting him, but crushed him with abuse." Two more passersby stop, but are also rejected when our hero learns that the first has married a maidservant and is currently engaged in the process of buying her freedom. Be helped by one who has "accepted a slave's embrace"? The second, a slave herself, is sent "home (to) offer her teats to her squalling daughter, for he considered it utterly degrading to accept relief from a wretch of the lowest order."
Finally a farmer's son comes by in a wagon. His interview reveals that he has "a praiseworthy calling, in which folk sought their subsistence by a trade of honest labour and certainly realised no profit unless it were gained the sweat of their brows." How can you not love this guy?
Starkather's tirades are easily recognizable as Saxo's own scorn and derision, hurled at the courtly decadence of his contemporary Danish aristocracy.
This translation was first published in 1979 but has been unavailable in the American market for most of the past two decades. Buy this book and read it! We need more of these authentic histories.
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