Niels Skyum-Nielsen & Niels Lund (eds.): Danish Medieval History: New Currents. Copenhagen, Museum Tusculanum Press, 1981. 258 pp. Karsten Friis-Jensen (ed.): Saxo Grammaticus: A Medieval Author between Norse and Latin Culture. Copenhagen, Museum Tusculanum Press, 1981. 173 pp.

These two volumes on Danish Medieval History and Saxo Grammaticus present the
papers delivered at a symposium held in honour of the 500th anniversary of the
University of Copenhagen. We are told in the acknowledgements that the

subjects to be chosen for such symposia were those in which »the university could claim to maintain significant scholarly traditions«. The Medieval History volume contains sections on Social History, the History of VVomen, Constitutional History, the History of Towns and Tråde, the History of Castles and Fortifications,and the Agricultural Crisis of the Later Middle Ages. The sections vary in length and pattern, containing two or more papers, and also a »response« to one or more papers. The Saxo Grammaticus volume straightforwardly presents a series of ten papers.

Many of the contributors to the symposium were Scandinavians but the organisers have sought an international flavour by inviting a number of other Europeans to contribute. Four of the six sections in Medieval History open with a paper on »international background«. One understands why the decision was made, but it was not in all cases a felicitous one. In the section on the History of VVomen, for example, it is clear that Georges Duby was invited to give the »international background« lecture. He explains ingeniously in his upening paragraph that »international« will in his paper be restricted to northern France in the twelfth century, and to the aristocracy only.

The difiiculties of Professor Duby's dual role remain unresolved. Such nnging generalisations as »Woman is always subjected to the power of a man« represent not an international situation, but the author's conclusions from a study of some written evidence from a limited period, place and class. So long as the context is borne in mind they may well have some degree of validity, but it seems a pity that so misleading a word as »international« was retained in the title. I do not know whether the Joycian effects of certain spellings are to be credited to author, translatør or printer. The evocative orthography primordeal occurs twice, with particularly deceptive overtones in »an even primordeal importance is attached to the sexual act« (p. 65); reality is masked behind a »veal of ideology« (p. 58) and the same page has the sadly unfeminist usage »in he beginning«. Nanna Damsholt's response to this paper is a startling and superb example of the feminine modesty convention at its most grateful, but in her own paper on Women in Medieval Denmark: A study in Rape she hovers somewhat uneasily between scholarship and ideology. Such unease recurs elsewhere in the volume. Professor Hilton's opening paper attempts definition of the social historian's role. I do not disagree with his statement that »as much arid historical writing has resulted from the imposition of theoretical schemes as from the indiscriminate heaping up of factual data«, (p. 12) except perhaps to wonder whether either of these approaches merits the definition »historical«. Niels Lund however, in spite of the title of his paper Viking Age Society in Denmark - Evidence and Theories, is less troubled by doubts concerning the historian's role than by the writing of books by nonhistorians: »Unfortunately most surveys of the Vikings are written by other scholars« (p. 31). These unhappy beings, he explains, do not understand what kinds of evidence it is proper to use or proper to discard, though such understanding is »in the spinal cord of most historians«. Such arrogance has its own romantic charm, but until any Viking historian demonstrates proper control of philological methodology, we may perhaps be forgiven for gently pointing out certain weaknesses in their spinal cords, as for example in the semantic naivety of Dr Lund's discussion of bryti and hlaford (pp. 30-31).

The volume on Saxo Grammaticus ranges through manuscript problems, sources, style and morality. Discussion of sources inevitably invites comparison with the Icelandic sagas, and a number of papers develop such themes. Birgit Strand's paper on Women in Gesta Danorum demonstrates clearly and fully shifts of attitude between Snorri and Saxo, and this demonstration gives conviction to her evaluation of Saxo's presentation of Thyre Danebod. Other papers discuss Saxo's dependence on Latin models, and Karsten Friis-Jensen's paper on The Lay of Ingellus and its Classical Models is a particularly interesting corrective to the stress on Saxo's northern sources. Another dimension is provided by Kurt Johannesson's paper on Order in Gesta Danorum and Order in the Creation which discusses the parallels in Saxo's concepts of order and presentation whith those of the learned schools of the twelfth century.

Peter Fisher gives us some pleasant insights into Saxo's witty use of language in his paper On Translating Saxo into English, whereas Hilda Ellis Davidson whose paper is called Wit and Eloquence in the courts of Saxo's Early Kings is rather more concerned with folk-lore parallels than with wit. Her footnotes, unsupported by adequate bibliographical details, would make us critical of the absence of editorial control, if we were not already so grateful that this volume is much less marred by misprints than Danish Medieval History where the most outrageous errors disfigure page after page.

It may not be easy to turn the papers of a symposium into a coherent volume of articles, but Saxo Grammaticus has achieved the more satisfactory result. In Danish Medieval History the chattiness of the spoken paper should have been tautened into a more scholarly presentation of the evidence, and the »responses« omitted altogether. If the proof-reading had then been håndled with even minimal competence, we would welcome both these volumes as warmly as we welcome the University of Copenhagen's celebration of its 500th birthday.