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Using the Gesta Danorumof Saxo Grammaticus as its main primary source, this works analyzes the transitions of the twelfth to thirteenth centuries in Denmark, particularly in the context of the Northern Crusades.

Myth and History in Celtic and Scandinavian Traditions explores the traditions of two fascinating and contiguous cultures in north-western Europe. History regularly brought these two peoples into contact, most prominently with the Viking invasion of Ireland. In the famous Second Battle of Moytura, gods such as Lug, Balor, and the Dagda participated in the conflict that distinguished this invasion. Pseudohistory, which consists of both secular and ecclesiastical fictions, arose in this nexus of peoples and myth and spilled over into other contexts such as chronological annals. Scandinavian gods such as Odin, Balder, Thor, and Loki feature in the Edda of Snorri Sturluson and the history of the Danes by Saxo Grammaticus. This volume explores such written works alongside archaeological evidence from earlier periods through fresh approaches that challenge entrenched views.

This paper reconsiders the passage in Maxims I in which Woden is said to have constructed wēos, a word that can be understood to mean “idols” or “pagan shrines.” It compares the passage to various euhemeristic narratives concerning Woden (or Óðinn) preserved by authors such as Ælfric, Æthelweard, Saxo Grammaticus, and Snorri Sturluson, and it argues that the Maxims I passage has more in common with ideas expressed in the later Scandinavian sources than in the earlier homiletic or insular historiographical sources. This exercise in comparative euhemerism suggests that the Woden passage in Maxims I is indebted to a narrative that resembled either the story of Óðinn's misadventure with an idol (preserved in Gesta Danorum) or the story of Óðinn as the builder of temples and founder of pagan religion (preserved in Ynglinga saga). In either case, it appears that a euhemeristic narrative of the sort preserved by Snorri and Saxo circulated centuries earlier in England. Toponymic evidence lends support to this conclusion, as place-names such as Wōdnes dīc and Grīmes dīc bear witness to the early circulation of otherwise unrecorded ideas about Woden as a supernatural builder. Finally, the presence of the Woden passage in Maxims I is viewed as a manifestation of the poem's indebtedness to the tradition of the wisdom contest, a genre associated with Óðinn in Old Norse sapiential literature.

Saxo Grammaticus’s Gesta Danorum (‘History of the Danes’), completed in the early thirteenth century, form the most celebrated Latin chronicle of the Scandinavian Middle Ages. This article investigates Saxo’s terminology of lord-man relationships, and how it relates to his conceptualization of political and social structures more broadly. It begins with a semantic analysis of Saxo’s concepts of social power, continues with extended comparisons with his classical Roman models and his Scandinavian contemporaries, and, in the two final sections, broadens its perspective to situate the text within recent debates about political ritual and ‘feudo-vassalic’ institutions in the central Middle Ages. It argues that the addition of a Scandinavian element to the broader European debates about medieval lordship can be an occasion to reflect on how those debates were framed in the first place, and to reassess critically notions of knighthood, political ritual, and feudalism.

The present article reassesses the legend of Heremod and its relevance to Beowulf. It argues on the basis of analogues preserved in Saxo Grammaticus’s Gesta Danorum that the legend of Heremod was principally concerned not with the theme of avaricious hoarding, but with themes of popular sentiment, regime change, and the relationship between a king and his most illustrious subjects. Understood as such, the legend of Heremod can be seen to resonate with the political situation at the Danish court in Beowulf in ways that have not yet been fully appreciated in the poem’s critical literature. The Heremod digressions, it is argued, prompt reflection on the predicaments both of Beowulf, whom the Danish people proclaim worthy of kingship, and of Hrothgar, who must decide what to do about Beowulf’s popularity.

This paper reassesses the relationship between Beowulf and the legendary tradition that existed prior to its composition. Through wide-ranging comparative analysis, it identifies probable departures from the antecedent tradition and argues that these departures are best understood not in impersonal terms, as Christian reactions to a pagan tradition, but in terms of a singular poet's sense of decorum, which was not possessed by all Christian authors throughout the Middle Ages. Focusing on interpretive controversies related to matters such as slavery, kin-slaying, the posthumous fate of pagans, and violence orchestrated by women, this paper argues that a series of ostensibly unrelated problems in the poem's critical literature could be resolved with a single coherent explanation: namely, that Beowulf was composed by a poet who sought to preserve as much as possible from the antecedent tradition, while not hesitating to obscure indecorous features and to express value judgments alien to the inherited material. The Beowulf poet's sense of decorum is shown herein to be idiosyncratic yet coherent and pervasive, responsible for various minor departures from tradition and for the selection of the untraditional protagonist around which the poem is structured.

Gesta Danorum Saksona Gramatika so eno najpomembnejših besedil srednjeveške danske književnosti. Prvih devet knjig opisuje predvsem legendarno zgodovino, zato so bogat vir skandinavskih mitov. Pri Zgodovini Dancev služi dolga lista kraljev kot nekakšno ogrodje, kronološka hrbtenica, ki se razširi v razne eksemplarne pripovedi o moralno dobrem in slabem, stare legende, dele islandskih sag, govore iz herojskih pesmi ter racionalizirane mite.

In these four artfully crafted essays, Patrick Geary explores the way ancient and medieval authors wrote about women. Geary describes the often marginal role women played in origin legends from antiquity until the twelfth century. Not confining himself to one religious tradition or region, he probes the tensions between women in biblical, classical, and medieval myths (such as Eve, Mary, Amazons, princesses, and countesses), and actual women in ancient and medieval societies. Using these legends as a lens through which to study patriarchal societies, Geary chooses moments and texts that illustrate how ancient authors (all of whom were male) confronted the place of women in their society. Unlike other books on the subject, Women at the Beginning attempts to understand not only the place of women in these legends, but also the ideologies of the men who wrote about them. The book concludes that the authors of these stories were themselves struggling with ambivalence about women in their own worlds and that this struggle manifested itself in their writings.

It has always been assumed that either Shakespeare or the author of the \"Ur-Hamlet\" was the first to introduce controversial religious allusions to the pre-Christian setting of Saxo's Amleth saga. But this article seeks to relocate the legend in the competing confessional narratives to which it belonged in mid-sixteenth-century Europe. A new link between Saxo, Belleforest, and Shakespeare's versions of the story is identified in the ethnographic histories of Johannes and Olaus Magnus of Sweden. The overlooked \"Historia Olai Magni\" (1567) is proposed as the source of local details (like the \"sledded Polacks\") in \"Hamlet.\"

Hamlet came from three directions at once. Shakespeare's source material was the Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus, who wrote a version of the Hamlet tale in around 1200, with a main character named 'Amleth'.