Grundtvigs vej til Saxo

Abstract

This article documents Grundtvig’s path to the works of Saxo Grammaticus
from around 1787, when he was taught to read by his strongwilled
mother, and until departure from Saxo after completing his translation
of Saxo’s chronicle in 1823. An overview of this period focuses on
the significant dates, book titles, and other points of interest that mark his
interest in the medieval clerical scribe’s work. Attention then turns to the
fact that, after 1823, Grundtvig never seriously returned to study of Saxo’s
ideas, nor did he ever try to reproduce his silver age Roman style in the
Danish language. For a very short while, Grundtvig thought about but
never followed through on a continuation of a history of Denmark from
where Saxo stopped (viz. in 1186). Though Grundtvig’s preoccupation
with Saxo lasted for the rest of his life, he preferred the Icelandic tongue
instead of Latin and believed that Norse mythology was a more fertile
field than Latin for discoveries about the national history of the Danes.
The present survey of these key points in how Grundtvig viewed and
evaluated Saxo also supplements previous scholarly treatments of stylisticlinguistic
analyses of Grundtvig’s youth translation of Saxo.