Gesta Danorum. The History of the Danes. Volume I PDF
Preview Gesta Danorum. The History of the Danes. Volume I
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 lirst 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 Valdemarson. 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 I 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 I of Saxo Grammaticus contains an introduction from the editor, and the first ten books of Saxo’s work. OXFORD MEDIEVAL TEXTS General Editors J. W. BINNS D. D’AVRAY M. S. KEMPSHALL R. C. LOVE SAXO G R A M M A T IC U S GESTA DANO RUM THE H ISTO RY OF TH E DANES VO LUM E I Saxo Grammaticus G E S T A DANORUM The History of the Danes VO LU M E I EDITED BY K A R ST EN F R IIS -JEN SEN TRANSLATED BY PETER FISH ER CLAREN D O N PRESS OXFORD OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, 0x2 6dp, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Karsten Friis-Jensen and Peter Fisher 2015 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted First Edition published in 2015 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2013956036 ISBN 978-0-19-82052-34 Typeset by Anne Joshua, Oxford Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, cro 4YY Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work. PREFA CE T he sixteen books of Saxo Grammaticus’s Gesta Danorum in their entirety form one of the most important texts of medieval Danish literature, but the first nine books contain such rich materials for medieval Scandinavian myth and legend that they have enjoyed special attention from an international readership interested in the cultural history of medieval Europe. Consequently much research has been devoted to the Gesta Danorum, including textual criticism, scholarly editing, and translation into modern languages. The present edition of the Latin text and translation into English originate in a more than twenty-year-old collective project which, besides the present editor and the present translator, includes Peter Zeeberg, the latest translator of Saxo into Danish. We all felt the need for a new critical edition of the Latin text which took advantage of the progress made in Saxo scholarship since the latest edition of 1931, combined with complete modern translations of the new text into Danish and English. For various reasons a Latin-Danish edition became the first result of the project, published by the Danish Society for Language and Literature in 2005 (Friis-Jensen/Zeeberg). The present Oxford Medieval Texts edition has benefited from the standard demands for volumes in this series by having to include, among other things, general notes to the text and translation and a general index. The Latin text of the present edition has undergone only minor changes in comparison with the 2005 edition, but it is accompanied by a critical apparatus in English, not in Latin. The English translation consists for the first nine books of a thoroughly revised version of the translation published in 1979 (History of the Danes, ed. Davidson, vol. i), with the kind permission of its publish ers. The translation of the last seven books has been made for the present edition. The general notes to text and translation are the responsibility of the present editor, but he has been assisted substantially, and patiently, by the present translator. In general the notes carry no references to secondary literature if the points made are felt to represent the communis opinio of modern scholarship. However, when particular independent opinions are mentioned, in approval or rejection, references are given. The writing of the notes has been VI PREFACE much facilitated by the existence of two modern full commentaries on the Gesta Danorum: History of the Danes, ed. Davidson (vol. ii), to books i-ix, and Danorum regum heroumque historia, trans. Christian sen, to books x-xvi. With the kind consent of the commentators, Hilda Ellis Davidson and Eric Christiansen, these commentaries have been exploited to the extent demanded by the much more modest scale of the present notes. But in a similar way references have been given in cases where these commentaries seem to represent particular independent views. The responsibility for the other main elements of this edition has been divided in the following way: the editor is responsible for the Introduction, the Latin text with apparatus criticus, and the Register of Parallels with alphabetical index, whereas the translator is respons ible for the Translator’s Introduction, the translation, the Biblio graphy, and the General Index; the remaining elements are the results of our cooperation. We have incurred many debts of thanks during our work on the present edition. We thank Messrs Boydell & Brewer for their permission to rework the translation of books i-ix, and the Danish Society for Language and Literature together with Oxford University Press for their mutual willingness to share the new critical readings of the Latin text. We likewise thank the two modern commentators on Saxo, Eric Christiansen and the late Hilda Ellis Davidson, for their generosity in allowing us to use their works freely. The Carlsberg Foundation made it possible for the translator to work on our project in Copenhagen in an early phase, for which we sincerely thank the members of its board. We also thank a large number of colleagues for assistance and for sharing their expertise with us, among them David Baxter, Lars Boje Mortensen, Ivan Boserup, Michael Lapidge, Anders Leegaard Knudsen, Jonna Louis-Jensen, Birger Munk Olsen, Britta Olrik Frederiksen, Marianne Pade, Reg Piggott (for the maps), Johann Ramminger, Inge Skovgaard-Petersen, and Chris tian Troelsgård. Special thanks go to the third member of our project, Peter Zeeberg, with whom we have had lively and fruitful discussions about many difficult points, and to Winifred Fisher, who over the years unfailingly supported our work by word and deed, including lending her fine ear for the English language. Peter Fisher and Karsten Friis-Jensen
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