[In the following essay, Kuhn reviews the wide range of papers submitted to the international Saxo conference held in Bologna, Italy, in September 1990 and collected in Saxo Grammaticus: Tra storiografia e litteratura.]

Saxo, the late twelfth-century cleric who, at the behest of bishop Absalon, provided the expanding Danish kingdom of the Valdemars with a heroic account of the country's history, has had a European presence ever since his Gesta Danorum were printed in Paris in 1514, notably after one of his princes, Amlethus, had become the protagonist of Shakespeare's best-known play. Saxo was an inspiration for the Danish and Scandinavian national revival of the nineteenth century with Grundtvig's 1818-23 translation as a typical expression. The critical edition of 1931 by Olrik and Raeder with its sumptuous layout marked the end of that period, and for half a century Saxo played a somewhat subdued role in the discourse of scholarship. But the last two decades have seen a renewed interest in the author, with major contributions by Kurt Johannesson (1978), Inge Skovgaard Petersen and Karsten Friis-Jensen (both 1987) as well as two conference proceedings from Copenhagen, Saxostudier (1975) and Saxo Grammaticus: A Medieval Author between Norse and Latin culture (1982). In the English-speaking world, too, there seems to be a new awareness of Saxo's importance; witness Peter Fisher's translation with Hilda Ellis Davidson's commentary (Cambridge, 1979f.) and Eric Christiansen's text edition with translation and commentary (Oxford, 1980).

An author dealing with ancient Scandinavia in Latin could not fail to attract the attention of the growing body of Italian scholars interested in the interface of the classical tradition with medieval Scandinavia, and thus the University of Perugia organized an international Saxo conference in Bevagna in September 1990. On this occasion, the Società Classiconorroena was founded, and the present publication is the first volume of a series of conference proceedings.

Slightly less than half of the sixteen contributions are, in one way or another, concerned with Saxo as a Latin author. Fabio Stok's “Note al testo di Sasso” (417-40) reflects the attitude now prevalent with regard to the editions of medieval texts. He systematically goes through all the emendations in Book XIII that editors have suggested with reference to the oldest printed edition, Christiern Pedersen's of 1514, many of them having already appeared in Stephanius's 1644 edition, apparently reflecting a desire to make Saxo's Latin conform to classical usage. In only 42 of 97 passages can he see a necessity for emendation, and he criticizes Olrik and Raeder for their readiness to fiddle with the oldest text; indeed, Franz Blatt, in his accompanying Index Verborum of 1947, distanced himself from some of the changes, and Stok stresses the need for a new critical text.

Karsten Friis-Jensen has through a series of studies established himself as an authority on Saxo's Latinitas. In his conference paper (“Saxo's Study of the Roman Historiographers and his Vision of History” 61-81), he moves beyond the realm of literary and linguistic research to Saxo's vision of Danish history as a parallel to Roman history and continuing a path separate from that of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation of his own day. Not only does Saxo use Roman terms for his masters (maximus pontifex for Absalon, salutaris princeps et parens noster for Valdermar, both straight out of Valerius Maximus), but he twists the chronology so as to make the founding brothers Dan and Angul contemporaries of Romulus and Remus and Frotho a contemporary and equivalent of Augustus. He describes the destruction of Lejre in terms of the fall of Troy, he makes Amleth's feigned madness similar to that of L. Brutus, who toppled King Tarquinius, and he renders the poetry of Starcatherus in language reminiscent of Juvenal and Horace, Denmark's answer, so to say, to the Augustan poets. Book VIII ends with Charlemagne becoming emperor, Book XII with the achievement, with Rome's help, of Denmark's ecclesiastical independence from Germany. “Saxo's main purpose was to represent the history of the Danish people as an ancient civilization, having developed independently of the Roman Empire and only eventually connected with it by the Christian faith” (78). Denmark's rivalry with the refounded Roman Empire on its Southern borders “was counterbalanced by a steadily improving relationship to the spiritual head of the Romans, the Pope. … With the help of the Roman classics, he wrote a history of Denmark that was more Roman than anything the Romans of his days had so far produced, about a nation which he wanted to see as the Rome of ancient Scandinavia” (79).

Giorgio Brugnoli (“Gli auctores di Saxo” 27-45) does for the prose what Friis-Jensen, in earlier studies, had done for the poetry, identifying the Roman poets Saxo quotes or varies. His debt to Vergil, Ovid, Lucan, and Statius has been known before; to these Brugnoli adds Horace, Prudentius, Lucretius, the Ilias Latina, and possibly the tragedies of Seneca. It seems that the beginnings and ends of verse passages stuck most forcefully in Saxo's memory. A new category is what the author calls “artistic-phonetic borrowings,” where Saxo's associative fantasy was stimulated not so much by the meaning as by the sound of a word or phrase. Giovanni Polara, too, stresses that Saxo is not content to quote or imitate but that he re-creates in the spirit of classical or post-classical authors (“Tra fantasmi e poeti” 261-80): in Hjarne's elegiac couplets on the death of Frotho, the rhetorical and poetic devices of classical epitaphs; in Ericus Disertus's senna with Grep, the contests of bucolic poetry; in Harthgrepa's conjuring of the dead, the magic practices in the Rome of the emperors and in the works of Lucan; in unusual meters, the models of Martianus Capella and Boethius. The paper reads more like impressions gathered on a leisurely ramble than a systematic investigation, but it is illuminating and never strays too far from Saxo.

Two papers relate Saxo to Latin authors of his own time. P. G. Schmidt (“Saxo Grammaticus: Ein singulärer Fall in der mittellateinischen Literatur?” 355-65) describes other Latin works based on writings in the vernacular. In Saxo's own time, Odo von Magdeburg re-worked Herzog Ernst and the English Gesta Herewardi—according to Schmidt one of the best historical novels of all times—using the well known Waltharius manu fortis and the Visio Godescalci, the description in Latin of a trip to a nether world of punishment experienced in a dream by a Holstein peasant in 1189. It is not claimed that Saxo knew any of these works; the purpose is to establish that he was not alone in writing a Latin work based on vernacular sources. The other paper is Kay Hørby's “Saxo Grammaticus: giurista, canonista” (83-9), an attempt to prove that Saxo's description of Absalon's election to the bishopric in 1158 showed a knowledge of canon law and to connect him, through Anders Sunesen, with Uguccione, who taught canon law at the University of Bologna and compiled the Summa Decretorum. The paper consists mostly of quotations, and this reader found the argument tenuous and unconvincing.

A number of papers are devoted to particular themes in the Gesta Danorum. Carlo Santini was not the only participant to comment on Saxo's praise of cleverness, astuteness, and cunning, whether in war or in peace (“Intelligenza, astuzia e stratagemmi nei Gesta Danorum” 293-316). The exponents of skill with words are Amlethus and Ericus Disertus, and here Santini detects traces not only of the skaldic tradition, but of classical rhetoric (the ξενικόν of Aristotle). The bulk of the article is devoted to the tricks and stratagems of military leaders, and here too he finds a similarity of incidents both in historical sources (from Rome, Byzantium, the Normans) and in folklore: setting fire to a city under siege by making animals (usually birds) carry the incendiary, or the feigned death of the commander with a request for a Christian burial (a variation of the Trojan horse), or the sabotage of the enemy's fleet on the eve of a naval battle, a motif Santini considers to represent a native Scandinavian tradition.

Another thematic paper which draws even more heavily on outside sources and only occasionally touches on the Gesta Danorum is Ute Schwab's extensive examination of the imagery of toasting and drinking for killing and dying (“Blut trinken und im Bier ertrinken” 367-415): drenching the enemy in blood, drinking blood, drowning in blood or (this rather sounds like an afterthought) in beer. She casts her net widely: the Nibelungenlied (with its murderous banquet at Attila's court) and other Middle High German epics, Old English poems (especially Andreas), the Old High German Ludwigslied, and from classical times the historians Lucan and Jordanes. The marshaling of sources is impressive, and the concepts of “antibanquet” and “bitter beer” are helpful, but it is not for the squeamish. The reader might be forgiven for finding something slightly morbid in this gleeful collecting of bloodthirstiness by a (presumably, peaceful) philologist. The Gesta Danorum come into the picture with Hadingus's drinking a lion's blood and Hundingus's drowning in a beer vat (Book I), the drinking of blood in the Bjarkamál and Hialto drinking a bear's blood (Book II), Folco drinking his own blood for strength (Book IV), Starcatherus's unwillingness to drink Angantyr's blood (Book VI), and the search for King Harald's body in the heaps of corpses after the Brávalla battle (Book VIII). Surprisingly, no mention is made of the ubiquitous drinking of blood, weather by weapons or by beasts of battle, in skaldic poetry; but then, Schwab is not primarily a Scandinavianist.

Another theme paper connecting Saxo with other sources is Mars Malm's discussion of “The Otherworldly Journeys of the Eighth Book of Gesta Danorum” (159-73). Book VIII is the last one concerned with Denmark's pre-Christian past, and toward the end, the Icelander Thorkillus undertakes, at the request of King Gormo, two fabulous journeys which are unique in the Gesta Danorum. The first one, in which the king participates, is motivated by curiosity and greed and is reminiscent of some of the journeys to outlying places narrated in Fornalda sögur; giants, objects or food that kill or transform, ghosts, an impassible river, and lack of sailing wind. On the second, the King sends Thorkillus on a errand to his god, Ugarthilocus (Utgarthilocus is another editors' emendation, to make it agree with Snorri's Utgarðaloki), to find out about the immortality of the soul. Thorkillus discovers the god in the shape of an old man fettered in a filthy cave (not unlike the King Geruthus whose riches Gormo sought on the first journey); he prays on the way home to the “universal god” to give him good wind and lands in Germany, where he learns about Christianity. When hearing Thorkillus's report, Gormo dies. Patch thought that Ugarthilocus's cave represented Hel contaminated by Christian notions; Malm takes the story as a Christian fable enriched with elements of Northern mythology, for which Saxo found material in vision literature (such as those of Tundal, Godescalc and Turchillus) and in allegorical interpretations of Aeneas's visit to the underworld, with elements from the Book of Revelation. The river between Guthmudus's and Geruthus's realms, not normally passable by mortals, may be derived from the Old Norse river Gjoll, but equally from the Classical river Styx, with Guthmundus taking Charon's role and the wild dogs acting for Cerberus. The earthly paradise of Guthmundus's realm may well be a reflection of the Ódáinsakr occurring in the Hervarar saga (a part of the realm of the giant king Guðmundr) and in Eriks saga víðförla; the latter source may, however, be post-Saxo. Geruthus has, like Lucifer, challenged (a) god and been banished to hell, and Ugarthilocus fettered in a cave looks like a double of the fettered Loki.

Ugarthilocus is also the point of departure for Anatoly Liberman's “Snorri and Saxo on Utgarðaloki, with Notes on Loki Laufeyjarson's Character, Career, and Name” (91-158), a study vastly exceeding the format of a conference paper, even discounting the ten pages of bibliography. Assuming that the two Lokis were originally one and the same person/god, he examines Loki's role at Balder's death, his punishment, and his freeing at Ragnarok as described in Snorri's Gylfaginning and scattered other testimonies on Loki in the Elder Edda (especially Lokasenna) and in skaldic poems. He also goes through the etymological connections that have been proposed and Loki motifs in legend and folktale. He thinks that in more than one respect Saxo's account represents an older stage of the tradition: Loki is a chthonian deity, a personified enclosure, and lock or threshold separating the living from the dead. From keeper of the dead, he develops into a ruler of the Other World, believed to command storms and fires. With the spread of shamanism, he would have assumed the status of a powerful shaman being able to change his sex or turn into an animal. Although admitted to Asgarðr, he remains a stranger among the gods; his children are mistreated, and he is regarded as the source of various misfortunes (acquiring, in this capacity, some trickster features). In Iceland, the myth of Baldr and Hoðr is almost forgotten, and the connection with Útgarðaloki is lost (except that Loki accompanies Þórr on his trip to the person so called). Many features attributed to Loki may be due to folk etymology (logi “fire,” leika “play,” lóki “penis,” lokka “to ensnare”). The name Loptr was probably acquired when Loki moved into shamanism and Ásgarðr; it also necessitated ascribing his old subterranean/submarine identity to an “outer world” or “unworld” (if we accept the Úgarðaloki of the Gesta Danorum). Loki is not a culture hero, a Scandinavian Prometheus, as at times has been claimed. Liberman wades through the mire of Loki scholarship without missing anything and without getting bogged down—indeed, with a nimble step, helped by the tonic of irony. It is an admirable performance and required reading for anybody who ventures any further opinion on the trickster god or his chthonic double.

Not quite the same claims could be made for Régis Boyer's “Femmes viriles et/ou fatidiques chez Saxo” (7-25). Boyer notes the frequency, in the first nine books, of women as warriors or fates or magicians. The valkyries combine these three elements, but Boyer thinks that at an older stage they were earth goddesses, givers of life and death, combining male and female potencies. He points out the many cases of assuming the other sex's role (also male transvestites such as Hagbarthus) and finds parallels in the Helgi lays of the Elder Edda and other Old Norse sources. There are classical examples, too, but Boyer sees here a strong native tradition at work, and the frequency with which Saxo uses the word fortuna is taken as corroborating the idea of female fates. In its present form, the paper appears rather speculative in connecting sources and concepts of widely different origin; it would require Liberman's thoroughness of treatment to be fully convincing.

The discrepancies between Snorri and Saxo's accounts of the death of Baldr (see Liberman) are the subject of Margaret Clunies-Ross's lucid paper (“Myth in Narrative in Saxo Grammaticus and Snorri Sturluson” 47-59). Despite all the differences resulting from Saxo localizing the events in the human world and making Hotherus and Balderus (still considered a half-god, however) rivals for the affection of Nanna, certain features remain constant: Balderus is the victim and Hotherus the sacrificer; in both cases there is an ordered but endangered world (Ásgarðr / Scandinavia) and a demonic netherworld (Hel and her father Loki/the satyr Mimingus and the forest nymphs, three “femmes fatidiques”); Balderus can only be killed with an unusual weapon, and the sacrificer (or the one who incites him) obtain the secret from a worman (Frigg/nymphs). According to the author, it is not possible to declare one tradition as “original” and the other as “derivative” (in the past, scholars tended to credit Snorri with preserving the story in its original shape). Both authors may have systematized a possibly quite diffuse tradition for their own ends. For Saxo, the historiographer of the patria, Hotherus was the new man, the successful type of royal power; for Snorri, the mythographer, with the death of Balder a crucial event and the apocalyptic perspectives stressed, the story was another imperfect pagan anticipation of Christian truth.

Richard North, too, is concerned with discrepancies between Saxo and other sources in “Saxo and the Swedish Wars in Beowulf” (175-88). He takes up the knotty story of King Aðils of Sweden (Athislus, Eadgils) and Hrólfr kraki (Rolvo, Hroðulf) of Denmark and the role played by the latter's champions, especially Boðvarr Bjarki (Biarco, Beowulf) in the battle on the ice of Lake Vänern between Aðils and Ali (Alo, Onela). Apart from the two sources named in the title, North draws on Arngrímur Jónsson's Latin abstract of the lost Skjoldunga saga, Snorri's account in Ynglinga saga, and the Bjarka rímur. Any attempt to reconstruct an original text would be hopeless. What a comparison does yield is a key to the respective author's attitudes. Saxo denigrates Athislus consistently and removes any hint of submissiveness by his stepson Rolvo: he is the patriot who wishes to invest Danish history with a line of glorious kings. The Beowulf poet, probably moving in a world of small aristocracies, views kingship as a difficult responsibility fraught with clashing loyalties (Beowulf killing the worthy King Onela to avenge his worthless cousin Hearðreð), a burden a wise man would choose to avoid.

The centerpiece of the book is a long piece by Teresa Pàroli, “Ideali di vita e significato della morte dei primi nove libri dei Gesta Danorum” (189-260), something on the level of a small monograph. Here, for once, somebody is concerned with the Gesta Danorum and nothing else, and takes us on a conducted tour of the first nine books, the pre-Christian fornold, without any abstract structural concepts. She notes what ethical qualities Saxo stresses and upholds in his long succession of kings and heroes and finds these surprisingly static and consistent. It is the heroic code, manliness proven in fighting and conquering, the obligations of revenge (in contrast to the sagas, compensation as a means of settling conflicts hardly ever occurs), men dying for their king, the loyalty of the family, a frugal life preserving physical and moral strength, and chastity in women. (Saxo seems to have shared some misogynist attitudes common among clergy of his time.) Only occasionally is a ruler singled out for upholding peace (Frotho III) or being interested in extending knowledge (Gormo). Eloquence, poetic gifts, and cunning are highly valued. Equality of birth and social standing in marriage are essential, otherwise conflicts are bound to arise within the family. It is a code remarkably untouched by the teachings of Christianity, and the recognized weakness of Book IX may have its origin in the difficulty of reconciling heroic and Christian standards: the facile Christian views expressed at the end of this book do not carry conviction. The author sees the crisis of Danish paganism, like that of Anglo-Saxon paganism a few centuries earlier, as a need for eschatological answers to the question of the meaning of life. Fame (as an abstraction) or an eternal fighting-ground in Oðin's hall were no longer good enough for people seeking an assurance of individual continuity beyond the grave.

Pàroli seems to be the only one among the books' contributors to recognize that the Gesta Danorum are an uneven work. Uneven in its historical coverage, it is a collection of stories rather than history. It is uneven also on the level of composition and style. Saxo can be an inspired writer where a good story or a gripping poem inspire him, but he can also be slapdash and tedious. His apparent interest in love stories may simply reflect the nature of his poetic sources. The climax of the pagan half of Gesta Danorum are probably the metrical translation of Starcatherus's poems. Here an inspiring source, ethical tensions, and a nostalgic recreation of a heroic past combine to rouse Saxo to his finest achievement.

Two papers will be mostly of interest to Italian readers. Diego Poli investigates the primitivism of Saxo and the eighteenth century philosopher Giambattisto Vico (281-91). According to him, both authors found in the mythic fables of a primitive fornold a sort of pre-rational, metaphorical semiotics, analogous to language and the figures of rhetoric. Poli speaks of an Italian Gothicism going back to the late fifteenth century, which helped to keep interest in ancient Scandinavia alive. This interest is spelled out in bibliographical detail in a longer paper by Riccardo Scarcia, “L'Ambleto di Apostolo Zeno” (317-54). Zeno (1688-1750), Imperial Poet 1719-1731 and author of the Scandinavian chapters of the monumental Mappamondo Istorico, was the most important author of opera librettos before Metastasio. Strangely enough, he does not seem to have known Shakespeare's Hamlet; his own Ambleto, written in collaboration with Pietro Pariati and with music by Francesco Gasparini, was performed at the Venice carnival of 1705 and reached the Haymarket Theatre in London in 1712; different musical settings of the same text are known from 1715, 1719, and 1742. The subject matter derives from Saxo, with Belleforest (who left traces in Shakespeare's play) as one of the secondary sources. Ambleto's feigned madness is the main theme, and the central scene is Ambleto's meeting with his mother Gerilda at the end of which he sings a revenge aria. The opera demands a happy end, which in this case is Ambleto taking over the realm after the usurper Fengone has been outmaneuvered and marrying his beloved Veremonda.

This rich and varied volume is evidence that at least outside Denmark, it is the romantic pagan past of the first half, rather than the solid history of the second half, that attracts most interest in the Gesta Danorum and that it is Saxo's wordsmiths Ericus Disertus, Amlethus, and Stracatherus that philologists find most fascinating. Liberman's, Pàroli's and Friis-Jensen's contributions alone make this collection a must for libraries, but any reader interested in Saxo will find much food for thought in other papers as well. It is beautifully printed (if not very solidly bound), and only exceptionally do misprints reach an irritating level.