Jones, Gwyn: "History of the Vikings" (Oxford University Press, Oxford,
1968, 1973, 1984).

Sturlson, Snorri: "The Heimskringla" (Translation: Samual Laing, London,
1844; released as Online Medieval and Classical Library E-text
#15, 1996). Web version at the following URL:
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/OMACL/Heimskringla/




INTRODUCTION.




SAXO'S POSITION.

Saxo Grammaticus, or "The Lettered", one of the notable historians of
the Middle Ages, may fairly be called not only the earliest chronicler
of Denmark, but her earliest writer. In the latter half of the twelfth
century, when Iceland was in the flush of literary production, Denmark
lingered behind. No literature in her vernacular, save a few Runic
inscriptions, has survived. Monkish annals, devotional works, and lives
were written in Latin; but the chronicle of Roskild, the necrology of
Lund, the register of gifts to the cloister of Sora, are not literature.
Neither are the half-mythological genealogies of kings; and besides, the
mass of these, though doubtless based on older verses that are lost,
are not proved to be, as they stand, prior to Saxo. One man only, Saxo's
elder contemporary, Sueno Aggonis, or Sweyn (Svend) Aageson, who wrote