Gesta Danorum

Gesta Danorum - Deeds of the Danes In the early years of the thirteenth century the Danish writer Saxo Grammaticus provided his people with a History of the Danes, an account of their glorious past from the legendary kings and heroes of Denmark to king Gorm. It is one of the major sources for the heroic and mythological traditions of northern Europe, though the complex Latin style and the wide range of material brought together from different sources have limited its use.

Saxo was probably a canon of Lund Cathedral, at that period a Danish cathedral, and lived at the end of the twelfth century. He was in the service of Archbishop Absalon, who encouraged him to write a history of his own country from the beginnings up to his own time, with a strong Christian bias. Starting with the myths and heroic tales of primitive Scandinavia, he devoted the first nine of his sixteen books to legendary material before dealing with the first kings of the Viking age and finished in 1285, after relating the earlier exploits of King Cnut Valdemarsson. The activities of the Danish kings were intimately bound up with the monarchies of Norway and Sweden; Cnut the Great, one of Saxo's heroes, whose empire stretched as far as Britain and Iceland, was ruler of both these countries. In the last books Saxo took particular concern to describe the campaigns of Valdemar the Great and his warrior archbishop, Absalon, against the Wends of North Germany. The work is a prosimetrum, that is, in six of the first nine books he inserts poems, which are intended to parallel specimens of old Danish heroic poetry in Latin metres. Saxo's Latin prose style is often complex, based as it is on models like Valerius Maximus and Martianus Capella, but he is a lively and compelling story-teller, often displaying a rather sly sense of humour, and an interest in the supernatural. He is the first author to give a full account of Hamlet, whose adventures he relates at some length, the elements of which in a great many respects correspond surprisingly closely with the characters and incidents of Shakespeare's play. Volume II of Saxo Grammaticus contains books 11-16 of Saxo's work, mainly dealing with the history of the first Danish kings.

From the ashes arises the sacred lore of the North, the ancient stories and proverbial wisdom of the satr religion. Mighty Gods and fierce Giants battle in the never-ending struggle between order and chaos, while men seek honor and glory in the eyes of their beloved deities. After many years of research and piecing together sources, now comes the first known holy text ever presented for the satr faith. Giving these ancestral accounts in their true, epic form, The satr Edda is designed as a religious work by and for the men and women of this path. In reconstructing this sacred epic, the idea is to create a living storytelling tradition that will honor the legacy of the ancient Teutonic peoples, while providing an in-depth source of satr wisdom for our modern world.

The twelfth to thirteenth centuries in Denmark were a time of transition, particularly in the context of the Northern Crusades. The Gesta Danorum of Saxo Grammaticus, a Danish cleric, was for several centuries an official and referential history in Denmark. Initially written under the commission of Archbishop Absolom, its sixteen books are traditionally divided into two parts, arbitrarily called "mythic" (books 1-9) and "historical" (books 10-16). The scheme of the Four Cardinal Virtues, first studied by Kurt Johanesson, provides referential and structural values, while what Andr Muceniecks terms the theme of the Counselor covers a principal narrative "kernel," inserted after the previously mentioned values as political conceptions and fundamental ideas. It is not sufficient for the king to be strong; he needs to be wise, and have a wiser man to guide him, here represented by the Archbishopric. By interweaving this with the context, Muceniecks identifies a defense of hierocratic conceptions, even in books where Christianity is absent. The Gesta also defines a Danish hegemonic project in the Baltic, under guidance from the Archbishopric, grounded in the crusade movements. Such movements are presented through complex language and imagery about a glorious past brought to bear on the projects in the thirteenth century while internal tensions strengthen the monarchic and ecclesiastical institutions.