Note 612 — Chapter II

J. Fulford Vicary’s Saga Time (Lond., 1887). Some time in the fifteenth century, a monk, Thomas Gheysmer, made an abridgment of Saxo, alleging that he “had said much rather for the sake of adornment than in behalf of truth.” The Canon Christiern Pederson printed the first edition of Saxo at Paris in 1514 (Anderson’s Horn’s Lit. Scandin. North, p. 102). This writer adds: “The entire work rests exclusively on oral tradition, which had been gathered by Saxo, and which he repeated precisely as he had heard it, for in the whole chronicle there is no trace of criticism proper.... Saxo must also undoubtedly have had Icelandic sagamen as authorities for the legendary part of his work; but there is not the slightest evidence to show that he ever had a written Icelandic saga before him.... In this part of the work he betrays no effort to separate fact from fiction, ... and he has in many instances consciously or unconsciously adorned the original material.” Horn adds that the last and best edition is that of P. E. Müller and J. Velchow, Saxonis Grammatici Historia Danica (Copenhagen, 1839).