The Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus wrote his Gesta Danorum, which was probably completed not long after 1208, as a monument to the ancient greatness of the Danes. It is easy to forget that he predates the Icelander Snorri Sturluson (1179–1241). Saxo is verbose and clumsy as a storyteller, always moralizing and always hammering home his points. In translation it is impossible to demonstrate the elegance of his Latin compositions – and even this elegance seems contrived and unappealing. It is no wonder that his work only survived in a single printed source, an edition published in 1514.

His heavy-handed historicization is probably one reason that it is Snorri who has become the basis for most general introductions to, and retellings of, Nordic myths. Saxo is often disregarded completely, even though he is older and actually seems to know much of the same material as Snorri – a point that I find interesting and deserving of more attention than it usually gets. The great French historian of religion, Georges Dumézil, has treated the matter of how the brief episode of Skadi and Njord in Snorri could be shown to be similar in great detail to the story of Hadingus in Saxo. The title of Dumézil's book – Du mythe au roman– demonstrates my point about the implied relationship between the two authors.