Danish History and Danish Historians

Abstract

THE historians of a small state like Denmark, employing a language little known outside the Scandinavian countries, are at a disadvantage when they write for publication in their mother-tongue. The difficulty is only slightly obviated by resort here and there to the device of providing, in one of the widely used languages, summaries of articles or monographs. Even the leading historiographical works in the three or four languages have but a few brief notices, inadequate and often inaccurate, on what historical scholarship has achieved in the smaller European states. Hence the need for occasional surveys for individual countries. In the pages that follow I shall try to show how the Danes down the centuries have viewed and practiced the writing of history, and especially what Danish scholars have done to preserve and make available their historical sources, and what they have done or attempted to do to provide authentic guides to the general history of the country (no attempt is made here to include or appraise the present generation of Danish historians). Such a survey must needs be done with some attention to the background of constantly changing times, of changes in emphasis, means, and objectives. Readers who wish to probe deeper than has been possible in the present brief sketch are referred to the and articles mentioned in the note on this page.' Medieval Denmark was part and parcel of the Latin world. Its language and much of its thinking were heavily indebted to the Latin Christian communities of western Europe. Denmark came definitely within the cultural domain of the Western Christian world after Ansgar and his successors had converted the Danes to Roman Catholic Christianity in the early ninth century, shortly after Charlemagne's death. It is not until the time of Saxo Grammaticus, some four centuries after Charlemagne, that we come to the first indigenous Danish historical work of prime importance to the study of Denmark's medieval history, his Gesta Danorum. This work, composed in Latin, was written at the instance of the great warriorstatesman of the age of the Waldemars, Archbishop Absalon. It was written in a time of crisis at the beginning of the thirteenth century, when the Danes were threatened with subjugation at the hands of the heathen Wends, who made constant forays on the Danish Baltic islands. The founding of Copenhagen on the island of Zealand as a fortified place that could be used against its sea-borne enemies was the work of Archbishop Absalon. Saxo's Gesta Dacorum-sixteen books on the deeds of the