The History of the Danes, Books I-IX
The History of the Danes, Books I-IX

Author: Saxo (Grammaticus)

Publisher: DS Brewer

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 532

ISBN-13: 9780859915021

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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 the historical present. It isone 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. Here Hilda Ellis Davidson, a specialist in Scandinavian mythology, together with the translator Peter Fisher, provides a full English edition; each of the first nine books is preceded by an introductory summary, and a detailed commentary follows on the folklore and life and customs of twelfth-century Denmark - including the sources of Hamlet, of which Saxo gives the earliest known account. HILDA ELLIS DAVIDSON's other books include The Sword in Anglo-Saxon England; PETER FISHER is also the translator of Olaus Magnus: A Description of the Northern Peoples. Both are available from Boydell & Brewer. `In the early years of the 13th century the Danish writer Saxo Grammaticus provided his people with a dignified and ambitious Latin account of their glorious past from the mythical past to the historical present -(He) collected the legends of Scandinavian gods and heroes, and arranged their exploits in a series of `biographies' which ostensibly formed an unbroken sequence. He took his tales from a variety of sources, and readers will find his collection of myths, folklore and fabulous history fascinating - An accurate and readable translation of the nine mythological books based on the best scholarly edition'. RUTH MORSE, BRITISH BOOK NEWS.

Gentle and Lowly
Gentle and Lowly

Author: Dane C. Ortlund

Publisher: Crossway

Published: 2020-03-18

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 1433566168

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Christians know that God loves them, but can easily feel that he is perpetually disappointed and frustrated, maybe even close to giving up on them. As a result, they focus a lot—and rightly so—on what Jesus has done to appease God’s wrath for sin. But how does Jesus Christ actually feel about his people amid all their sins and failures? This book draws us to Matthew 11, where Jesus describes himself as “gentle and lowly in heart,” longing for his people to find rest in him. The gospel flows from God’s deepest heart for his people, a heart of tender love for the sinful and suffering. These chapters take readers into the depths of Christ’s very heart for sinners, diving deep into Bible passages that speak of who Christ is and encouraging readers with the affections of Christ for his people. His longing heart for sinners comforts and sustains readers in their up-and-down lives.

The Danish History of Saxo Grammaticus
The Danish History of Saxo Grammaticus

Author: Saxo Grammaticus

Publisher: Alan Rodgers Books

Published: 2006-12-01

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 9781598185607

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Saxo Grammaticus, who's believed to have lived from 1150 until 1220 (though the dates are uncertain), wrote a sixteen-volume history of the Denmark that he lived in. Volumes X through XVI (oddly -- or perhaps not so oddly -- written first) are a conventional history of Saxo's day and age. But the first the volumes are the stuff of myth and legend, delightful tales of mythic Norse persons and circumstances. This book is comprised of those mythic volumes, and it's special stuff indeed.

Danes in Wessex
Danes in Wessex

Author: Ryan Lavelle

Publisher: Oxbow Books

Published: 2015-11-30

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 1782979328

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There have been many studies of the Scandinavians in Britain, but this is the first collection of essays to be devoted solely to their engagement with Wessex. New work on the early Middle Ages, not least the excavations of mass graves associated with the Viking Age in Dorset and Oxford, drew attention to the gaps in our understanding of the wider impact of Scandinavians in areas of Britain not traditionally associated with them. Here, a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approach to the problems of their study is presented. While there may not have been the same degree of impact, discernible particularly in place-names and archaeology, as in those areas of Britain which had substantial influxes of Scandinavian settlers, Wessex was a major theater of the Viking wars in the reigns of Alfred and Æthelred Unræd. Two major topics, the Viking wars and the Danish landowning elite, figure strongly in this collection but are shown not to be the sole reasons for the presence of Danes, or items associated with them, in Wessex. Multidisciplinary approaches evoke Vikings and Danes not just through the written record, but through their impact on real and imaginary landscapes and via the objects they owned or produced. The papers raise wider questions too, such as when did aggressive Vikings morph into more acceptable Danes, and what issues of identity were there for natives and incomers in a province whose founders were believed to have also come from North Sea areas, if not from parts of Denmark itself? Readers can continue for themselves aspects of these broader debates that will be stimulated by this fascinating and significant series of studies by both established scholars and new researchers.

Gesta Danorum
Gesta Danorum

Author: Saxo (Grammaticus)

Publisher: Oxford Medieval Texts

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 874

ISBN-13: 0198205236

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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 I of Saxo Grammaticus contains an introduction from the editor, and the first ten books of Saxo's work.