[Gutenberg 1150] • The Danish History, Books I-IX

An Excerpt from the book-

Nothing is stranger than that a work of such force and genius, unique in

Danish letters, should have been forgotten for three hundred years, and

have survived only in an epitome and in exceedingly few manuscripts. The

history of the book is worth recording. Doubtless its very merits, its

"marvellous vocabulary, thickly-studded maxims, and excellent variety of

images," which Erasmus admired long afterwards, sealed it to the vulgar.

A man needed some Latin to appreciate it, and Erasmus' natural wonder

"how a Dane at that day could have such a force of eloquence" is a

measure of the rarity both of the gift and of a public that could

appraise it. The epitome (made about 1430) shows that Saxo was felt to

be difficult, its author saying: "Since Saxo's work is in many places

diffuse, and many things are said more for ornament than for historical

truth, and moreover his style is too obscure on account of the number

of terms ("plurima vocabula") and sundry poems, which are unfamiliar to

modern times, this opuscle puts in clear words the more notable of

the deeds there related, with the addition of some that happened after

Saxo's death." A Low-German version of this epitome, which appeared in

1485, had a considerable vogue, and the two together "helped to drive

the history out of our libraries, and explains why the annalists and

geographers of the Middle Ages so seldom quoted it." This neglect

appears to have been greatest of all in Denmark, and to have lasted

until the appearance of the "First Edition" in 1511.

The first impulse towards this work by which Saxo was saved, is found

in a letter from the Bishop of Roskild, Lave Urne, dated May 1512, to

Christian Pederson, Canon of Lund, whom he compliments as a lover of

letters, antiquary, and patriot, and urges to edit and publish "tam

divinum latinae eruditionis culmen et splendorem Saxonem nostrum".

Nearly two years afterwards Christian Pederson sent Lave Urne a copy of

the first edition, now all printed, with an account of its history.