Grammaticus Saxo

Saxo Grammaticus (c. 1150–c. 1220) was a Danish historian, the author of the Gesta Danorum, the first full history of Denmark. Almost nothing is known of his life beyond what he says himself: he was a clerk in the service of Absalon, archbishop of Lund, who commissioned the work. His sixteen books, in ornate Latin, trace the Danes from their legendary founder Dan to the late twelfth century; the first nine preserve the heroic legends of the North, including the tale of Amleth that Shakespeare transformed into Hamlet, and the later books are a source for medieval Danish history. Later writers gave him the epithet Grammaticus, the learned.