HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

HIGH AND LATE MEDIEVAL NATIONAL HISTORIOGRAPHY 199of Snorri’s who was located at the court of Valdemar II during1240/41, is accepted as the author. The depiction, in which thestory of Knut the Great serves as focal point, is divided into 130chapters. It may be assumed that, in the context of the late medievaltransmittal of texts, the Sköldunga saga came before this; the latteroffered the legendary Danish history from ancestor Sköld to Gormthe Elder, the father of Harald Bluetooth, whereby a comprehensivedepiction of Danish history (Danakonunga sögur) was accomplished.Even less well documented, known only through a seventeenth-centurycopy, is the Ágrip af sögu Danakonunga, 69 written around 1241/59.The short text offers an overview of the Danish kings from HaraldBluetooth to Valdemar II, and it arose possibly in connection withIngeborg, the daughter of the Danish king Erik IV and wife of theNorwegian king Magnus VI, at the Norwegian court. Finally thereis an early document of a vernacular national historical depictionoriginating in Denmark itself, which was written at the end of thethirteenth century in Lund. 70 It consists of a series of kings’ historicalbiographies from the eponymous first ruler Dan to the year 1295.Continuation and Change in the Context of Late Medieval HistoriographyIn the fourteenth century, especially in the period from around 1310to 1390, one observes nearly everywhere a stabilization and re-writingof earlier developed national historical concepts. In this context twophenomena can be distinguished: on the one hand, the express rewritingof base texts that had been developed in the thirteenth century;and, on the other hand, new emphases attributable above allto the embedding of national history in universal historical presentations,which were variably historiographically successful. A newbeginning of a national historical tradition exists in this period onlyin Scotland.The re-adoption of a Danish national historical depiction followedin close connection to the historical work of Saxo, of which anunknown author, possibly a Jutland Franciscan, wrote an excerpt69Ágrip af sogu Danakonunga, ed. B. Gud¯nason, 323–36.70Gesta Danorum på danskæ, in Gammeldanske Krøniker, ed. M. Lorenzen (Copenhagen,1887–1913), 1–60.