Saxo Grammaticus

Saxo was born around 1160 into a family of warriors: his father and grandfather had served in the guard of King Valdemar I, and he himself, a man of the Church, promises the son of that king to serve him by his intellect, being unable to bear arms. He belonged to the household of Absalon, archbishop of Lund, whose will of 1201 names him his clerk and orders him to return to the monastery of Sorø two borrowed books. The nickname Grammaticus, the man of letters, comes to him from a fourteenth-century abridgement. Custom gives 1220 as the year of his death, which no source dates.

In the catalogue 1

• ChronicleGesta Danorum: The History of the DanesGesta DanorumSaxo Grammaticus · 1208Literature