Saxo Grammaticus described, in the Book XIV of his Gesta Danorum, the festival of Svantovit which was held annually after harvest in front of that temple.
It is thought that Shakespeare never read Gesta Danorum, and instead had access to an auxiliary version of the tale describing the downfall of the Prince of Denmark, whose real name, Amleth, was used in anagram by Shakespeare for Hamlet.
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It is possible that Saxo then enlarged it with Books 15 and 16, telling the story of King Valdemar I's last years and King Canute VI's first years.
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Since this book is so large and Absalon has greater importance than King Valdemar I, this book may have been written first and comprised a work on its own.
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Johannes Oporinus, published 1534, title: Saxonis Grammatici Danorum Historiae Libri XVI
Peter Fisher (translator) (born 1934), British, professor emeritus from Anglia Polytechnic University, Cambridge, known for translating Gesta Danorum
According to legend, and as told in Saxo's Gesta Danorum (chronicles of the Danes), as well as in the Scylding Sagas, Helge (brother to Hroar, both known from the Beowolf poems) once came by this island on one of his raiding expeditions.
Gesta Danorum | Gesta principum Polonorum | Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum | Mercito Gesta | Gesta Hunnorum et Hungarorum |
Óðinn’s seduction of Rindr is described once outside the Gesta Danorum, in a line of stanza 3 of Sigurðardrápa, a poem by Kormákr Ögmundarson praising Sigurðr Hlaðajarl, who ruled around Trondheim in the mid-10th century.