This chapter makes the case for a literary history that accounts for the multilingual nature of medieval Denmark, giving particular attention to Danish, German, and Latin. It relates such a project to current research interests such as crossing the boundaries of national philologies; demonstrates the need for it by reviewing existing surveys of the period; and outlines some lines of enquiry, including the translation and transmission of texts, that it could pursue.
Keywords: Danish; Denmark; German; Latin; literary history; Low German; Middle Ages
Embracing, or at least including a nod toward, the rhetoric of openness is by now almost de rigueur when it comes to setting the agenda for research on the literature of the Middle Ages.1 The origins of national [p. 104]Beginning of page 104 philologies in the context of nineteenth-century nation-building are widely recognized, and with this awareness has come the pursuit of more open discourses that cross, question, and break down the disciplinary, political, and cultural boundaries associated with modern nation states. These efforts to rethink approaches to literature before the current era have made much of adopting, on the one hand, a European perspective and questioning, on the other, what is meant by ‘Europe’ and how it functions as a potentially limiting point of orientation. This in turn dovetails with the growing scholarly interest in a ‘global’ Middle Ages. Work on the ‘insular Middle Ages’, the Atlantic, northern and eastern Europe, Byzantine Studies, Africa, or connections with the Arab world — the list is not exclusive — can all be seen as an expression of this process.2
Yet tensions remain — imbalances in the attention being given to different regions, languages, and approaches that may be due to more than just the truism that it is not possible to cover everything. The present chapter responds to one particular case in point. It follows on from my Marie Curie Fellowship, ‘Northern Narratives: The Poetics of Cultural Contact between Germany and Scandinavia in the Middle Ages’ (2015–17). One of the conclusions to emerge from that project is that there is still a pressing need to open up the writing of medieval literary history in the case of German in Denmark. I say ‘still’ because the desideratum is not a new one. It, and the intellectual context behind it, had already been identified by Vibeke Winge almost thirty years ago, long before topics such as multilingualism and the questioning of nationally oriented scholarship became fashionable in the philologies: [p. 105]Beginning of page 105
Aus einer größeren Perspektive gesehen ist es m.E. notwendig, die dänische Kultur-, Sprach- und Literaturgeschichte unter dem Aspekt der Mehrsprachigkeit darzustellen. Bis heute ist das jedoch noch nie versucht worden. Das Verhältnis zu unserem südlichen Nachbarn spielt in historischen Darstellungen immer eine große Rolle, jedoch ist diese infolge einer Rückprojezierung der nationalen Konflikte des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts meistens eine recht negative.3
(From a wider perspective, it is in my view necessary to present Danish cultural, linguistic, and literary history in terms of multilingualism. Up to now, however, that has never been attempted. Relations with our southern neighbour always play a significant role in historical accounts, but it is, as a consequence of the back-projection of the national conflicts of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, generally a markedly negative one.)
The following pages advocate and lay the groundwork for a project that would finally begin to fill this gap where premodern literature is concerned. I begin with a necessarily brief overview (or reminder) of the extent of the German presence in Denmark in the period, before demonstrating how it has been marginalized in Danish literary historiography in recent decades. I consider possible explanations for this, including a continued influence of the factors mentioned by Winge. I then present some ways in which Danish, German, and Latin could be brought together in a genuinely inclusive history of literature in the broadest sense of the term. Finally, I consider how such a project could be developed further, from its potential to inform our understanding of specific locations, such as Odense, to the connections that could be drawn with current themes, such as diversification and multilingualism, in Modern Languages teaching and research.
It is a fact that the history and culture of (generally northern) Germany and Denmark were intertwined in the Middle Ages. Following [p. 106]Beginning of page 106 the breakdown of the Danish ‘North Sea empire’, ‘the major ambitions of Danish kings were […] directed […] east and south along the land frontiers of Jutland and the shores of the Baltic Sea. […] In each case Danish ambitions came into conflict with the interests of German princes, institutions, and populations.’4 Large parts, or even all, of the realm were pawned and effectively in the hands of German aristocrats at various points.5 Numerous Danish kings and queens were of German descent,6 and there was a substantial presence of German merchants and craftsmen — not entirely without conflict, but marked also by a degree of convergence evident in, for instance, intermarriage.7 This state of affairs went hand in hand with the use of German in Denmark.8 Early linguistic influence is apparent in a twelfth-century tombstone in Føvling (Jutland) on which part of the name is a loanword from Low German,9 and evidence of proficiency in German can be found in the account in Saxo’s Gesta Danorum (History of the [p. 107]Beginning of page 107 Danes) of a legate sent by Valdemar I to Henry the Lion in 1176: ‘Waldemarus […] Henricum, quem stabulo suo preposuerat, Germanice uocis admodum gnarum in Saxoniam dirigi curat’ (The Danish king […] arranged to have Henrik, his master of the horse, sent to Saxony, because the man was tolerably conversant with the German tongue).10 It is also very likely that the northern German poet Rumelant von Sachsen performed strophes concerned with Danish politics on a visit to Denmark in the later thirteenth century.11 The written record, however, does not begin until the fourteenth century. Alongside the production of numerous Urkunden in (Low) German for private, political, and administrative purposes — the schra of the so-called Elende Lav (Foreigners’ Guild) in Odense (1435) is one well-known example — historiographical and legal texts were translated into German.12 This material needs to be viewed alongside Danish works based on German sources or models, such as Dværgekongen Laurin (Laurin the Dwarf King; earliest manuscript c. 1500), the Danish Lucidarius (generally dated to the fourteenth century), or De gamle danske Dyrerim (The Old Danish Rhyming Bestiary; fifteenth century).13 [p. 108]Beginning of page 108
The treatment of the German tradition in existing literary histories of Denmark stands at odds with the situation that has just been described.14 Consider, for instance, Dansk litteraturs historie (Danish Literary History; 2006–09), a multivolume collaborative survey that has the status of a ‘standard work’. The project aims emphatically to understand Danish literature from a European and international perspective.15 As the foreword puts it: ‘Den danske litteratur sættes derfor ind i en europæisk og — for nyere perioders vedkommende — international sammenhæng, som tydeliggør, hvordan dansk litteratur til stadighed har udfoldet sig i et samspil med andre litteraturer og kulturstrømninger’ (Danish literature is therefore set in a European and — where more recent periods are concerned — international context that makes clear how Danish literature has constantly unfolded in an interplay with other literatures and cultural currents).16 In many respects, the project lives up to these ambitions. Where the German-speaking areas in the premodern period are concerned, we learn, for instance, about Johan Snell, the first printer in Denmark, who came to Odense from Lübeck in the late fifteenth century, or the German sources for most of the stories in the late medieval/early modern folkebøger.17
Only marginally addressed, however, is the use of German for textual production within Denmark. In the 188 pages that cover developments up to 1500 — to take an arbitrary cut-off point — this is recognized in no more than three sentences; the sole text to be mentioned by name in this context is the Jyske Lov (Jutish Law), which was translated into Low German in the fourteenth century.18 This state [p. 109]Beginning of page 109 of affairs cannot, as the examples later in this chapter will show, be explained simply by a lack of surviving material in German to include; and it is all the more striking when compared with the attention that is given to the literary use of Latin in Denmark. The imbalance can thus be seen not as a result of simply excluding anything that is ‘not (in) Danish’ but to indicate a challenge posed by German in particular.19 The ironic result is that, despite the programme laid out in the foreword, the sense of Denmark as set apart from what is now the larger neighbour to the south is reinforced: there is a readiness to acknowledge influence from (primarily northern) Germany, but the notion of literary activity in German within Denmark seems difficult to countenance in any detail.
This is not an isolated example; similar tendencies can also be observed in other literary histories. Three can be mentioned here, one from another collaborative study and two from enterprises with a single author. (i) Hovedsporet: Dansk litteraturs historie (The Main Line: Danish Literary History; 2005) also reflects to a degree on concepts of Danish identity and the European context for Danish literature.20 But German is all but written out of the linguistic-literary developments in the Middle Ages, which are presented in terms of the schematic sequence: orality–written Latin culture–written Danish culture.21 Consequently, the discussion of the medieval period concentrates on writing in Latin and Danish; German is mentioned only twice in over eighty pages (translations of the Compendium Saxonis and the Jyske Lov).22
(ii) Pil Dahlerup’s Dansk litteratur: Middelalder (Danish Literature: Middle Ages; 1998) and its later extension, Sanselig senmiddelalder (Late Middle Ages of the Senses; 2010), do mention German material on occasion (e.g. the translations of the Rimkrønike [p. 110]Beginning of page 110 (Rhyming Chronicle) and the Jyske Lov),23 but there is no effort to address German systematically alongside the Danish and Latin traditions. Emblematic of this is the framework formulated for the Middelalder volume, where the starting point is the ‘national language’, broadened where necessary to include Latin:
Jeg har valgt det hovedprincip, at ‘dansk’ her betyder tekster der foreligger på dansk sprog. […] Princippet kan imidlertid ikke strengt overholdes. Det brydes for dette binds vedkommende af latindigterne, hvor ‘dansk’ betyder, personer, der kan tale dansk, men ikke gør det, eller personer bosiddende i Danmark, der skriver (om danske emner) på et fremmed sprog.24
(The main principle I have chosen is that ‘Danish’ here means texts that are found in the Danish language. […] The principle, however, cannot be strictly observed. In this volume, it is set aside in the case of the Latin poets, where ‘Danish’ means people who can speak Danish but do not, or people living in Denmark who write (about Danish subjects) in a foreign language.)
(iii) The first volume of Anne-Marie Mai’s Hvor litteraturen finder sted (Where Literature Takes Place; 2010–11), finally, addresses the problem of German/Danish identities, particularly with regard to language,25 mentions the multilingual nature of later centuries,26 and [p. 111]Beginning of page 111 acknowledges earlier German connections and the Low German translation of the Rimkrønike.27 But the latter is the exception that proves the rule in the picture drawn of the manuscript culture of medieval Denmark: ‘Håndskrifternes sprog var oftest latin, men også dansk sprog blev anvendt, og der findes både håndskrifter med runer og med latinske bogstaver’ (The language of the manuscripts was most often Latin, but the Danish language was also used, and manuscripts are found with both runes and Latin letters).28
The reasons for the infrequent juxtaposition of the German and Danish literary-historical strands, as we might call them, are complex, and should not be seen reductively in any one national context alone.29 The East Norse tradition, to which Danish belongs, has historically tended to receive relatively little attention of any kind compared to the more ‘canonical’ West Norse/Icelandic material,30 and institutional structures in the United Kingdom, for instance, do not necessarily lend themselves to the building of bridges between Old Norse and German Studies. The particular definition of literature that is adopted [p. 112]Beginning of page 112 in any given case will also affect the range of material that is included. Nonetheless, it is highly likely that modern cultural interpretations of Denmark’s relationship with Germany are also involved. As alluded to in Winge’s remarks (p. 105 above), against the background of the two Schleswig wars in the nineteenth century and the German occupation in World War II in the twentieth, tensions (if not outright antagonism) have marked not only academic scholarship but also more popular mindsets.
Images of the Hanseatic League that position it as a German force in opposition to Danish interests are an obvious example of this: the Peace of Stralsund that concluded the war between Denmark and the League in 1370 has been interpreted as ‘Unterdrückung durch ein expansives Deutschland’ (subjection by an expanding Germany).31 Such understandings appear to have become so deeply set as to prevent even a single Danish town from joining the ‘Hanse Today’ network, the aim of which is explicitly ‘to bring about closer economic, cultural, social and national ties across Europe’.32 Something of this mentality was captured by the linguist, academic, and publisher Jørn Lund when he acerbically commented: ‘Tysk er det sprog og den kultur, der har påvirket dansk mest gennem hele det historiske forløb. Men det er der mange, der ikke vil være ved’ (German is the language and culture that has had the greatest influence on Danish through the whole course of history. But there are many who do not want to acknowledge this).33
Nevertheless, some aspects of the situation to which Winge and Lund refer have begun to change. In the public sphere, one could point to the 2020 Danish–German ‘friendship year’ declared to mark the centenary of the plebiscites that led to North Schleswig/Southern Jutland becoming part of Denmark.34 In an academic context, meanwhile, scholarship from various angles has argued against setting [p. 113]Beginning of page 113 Denmark apart from Germany in particular and from the European cultural sphere more generally. This includes, for example, work on the German–Danish borderlands in which ‘the sharp edges of national boundaries begin to blur, and several layers of identity surface side by side’.35 Danish historiography on the Middle Ages has likewise been concerned to question the paradigm of ‘essential differences between the societies of Western Europe on the one hand and Denmark and the Scandinavian countries on the other’, and to approach medieval Denmark in an emphatically European context instead.36 The influence of Middle Low German on the Scandinavian vernaculars, including Danish, has also long been recognized.37 When it comes to the role played by German in the specifically literary history of the Danish Middle Ages, however, the picture remains fragmented. Studies on individual themes and works can be found, particularly in the context of projects on the wider German–Scandinavian literary and linguistic interface,38 but a comprehensive account is lacking. [p. 114]Beginning of page 114
The closest existing counterpart to the project I have in mind is Winge’s study. Yet its focus — and it does not claim otherwise — is on linguistic history: the primary concern is to describe the German used in Denmark in terms of dialectal features, the transition from Low to High German, the social background of its users, and so on.39 Matters such as textual or narrative structure, differences between source and translation, or the circulation and function of themes, motifs, and genres are addressed at best tangentially in an analysis of this kind. Second, although it recognizes the fundamentally multilingual nature of medieval Denmark,40 Winge’s study introduces the Danish and Latin traditions primarily where they inform discussion of the German material in any particular case, rather than covering them in parallel to it. What forms might an attempt to do just that in a new literary history take? Some possibilities, with examples drawn primarily from historical writing, are presented below; in practice, there will obviously be overlaps between them.
(i) One possibility is to present the material in terms of cross-language rubrics such as the emergence of a written tradition on parchment (later also paper) in roman script for the three languages.41 In this context, Latin is documented from the eleventh century; the oldest known coherent text of Danish origin is Canute IV’s 1085 letter of donation to the church of St Lawrence in Lund (the earliest copy is [p. 115]Beginning of page 115 preserved in a twelfth-century manuscript),42 and the earliest specifically narrative text is the Passio Kanuti (Passion of Canute), written in Odense by an anonymous author between 1095 and 1101 (but known only from a sixteenth-century copy).43 We know that Danish was being used to write down legal texts from as early as around 1170.44 The first texts in German, finally, appear to have been the fourteenth-century Urkunden mentioned above; the earliest that can be said with certainty to have originated in Denmark is from 1329, issued by Christopher II in Ringsted.45 Identifying the appearance of these strands is merely one way in which one can do justice to the co-existence of the three languages. It is not intended to valorize a search for ‘firsts’ of which our knowledge can only ever be conditional because of the possibility of lost material. Instead, it points to how the interest in beginnings and origins that is associated with the narratives of national philologies46 can be redirected (or expanded) to address this plurality, rather than levelling it in order to map teleologically the course of one single future national language. A juxtaposition along these lines could, for example, be used to compare and contrast the rise of Danish and German as vernaculars in terms of stages such as literization, literarization, and librarization.47
(ii) The trajectory of particular texts as they passed from one language to another can also be traced. An example of this is the afterlife of Saxo’s Gesta Danorum in languages other than Latin.48 His influence [p. 116]Beginning of page 116 can be felt in the Gesta Danorum pa danskæ (History of the Danes in Danish),49 and the Compendium Saxonis (a compressed and stylistically simplified version; c. 1342–46)50 was one of the sources for the fifteenth-century Danish Rimkrønike.51 The Rimkrønike was in turn translated into German (very likely still in Denmark, in the orbit of the royal household) as the Niederdeutsche Chronik aller koninge tho Dennemarken (Low German Chronicle of All the Kings of Denmark).52 In addition, the Compendium was translated directly into German in two versions, both of which can be linked to a Danish context. Copenhagen, Royal Library, Gammel kongelige Samling 819 2°, a manuscript of one of these versions, was ‘completed 22 February 1476 at Skanderborg Castle, Jutland’ and ‘written for Erik Ottesen Rosenkrantz (ca. 1427–1503), who […] held the highest office in the royal household’; the other version, the Denscke Kroneke (Danish Chronicle), was very probably printed (on the basis of an earlier manuscript) by Matthäus Brandis in Odense in 1502.53 [p. 117]Beginning of page 117
(iii) Alternatively, specific individuals and institutions can be foregrounded. For instance, Johannes Nicolai/Jens Nielsen from Ålborg — plausibly the prior of the Helligåndskloster — not only copied (at least a large part of) Copenhagen, Arnamagnæan Institute, 372 2° (completed in 1482), which contains a Middle Low German Historienbibel, but also produced a number of manuscripts in Danish, featuring in particular the Jyske Lov.54 The Cistercian abbey of Ryd/Rüde in Schleswig,55 meanwhile, is well known to scholars of medieval Danish history and historical writing as the place where the Latin Annales Ryenses (Annals of Ryd) were probably composed in the late thirteenth century. The influence of the annals on Danish historiography and their ‘strong anti-German tone’ is often noted.56 That the [p. 118]Beginning of page 118 abbey also helped to mediate historical writing in German in later medieval Denmark, however, is not so widely recognized: the manuscript Copenhagen, Royal Library, Gammel kongelige Samling 1978 4°, which includes a version of the so-called Sächsische Weltchronik (Saxon World Chronicle), was copied there by Johannes Vicken in 1434.57 The version of the Weltchronik in that manuscript is also of interest because it appears to have been used in a work known as the Mittelniederdeutsche Weltchronik (Middle Low German World Chronicle); the manuscript Copenhagen, Arnamagnæan Institute, 29 2° of the latter contains a preface noting that it was written/copied at the behest of Eggert Frille, son of a Schleswig nobleman and an influential associate of Christian I of Denmark.58
(iv) Finally, the material circulation of texts across territorial borders can be investigated. The surviving text of the Niederdeutsche Chronik aller koninge tho Dennemarken, for example, is a copy made by Johann Russe of a (now lost) source captured from the Danes in the Battle of Hemmingstedt in 1500. Russe’s copy was then itself captured — along with the other historiographical texts he assembled in the same codex, such as the ‘anti-Danish’ Holsteinische Reimchronik (Rhymed Chronicle of Holstein) — when Ditmarschen was conquered by the Danes in 1559.59 To cases such as this we could add further material such as the Low German translation of [p. 119]Beginning of page 119 the Speculum humanae salvationis (Mirror of Human Salvation) that was probably produced in Germany but came to Denmark by or in the sixteenth century, during which it was annotated in Danish.60 In many cases, of course, a reconstruction of the exact circumstances of such transfer processes is no longer possible. Adam of Bremen’s Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum (History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen), to take an example involving writing in Latin, was used in several works of Latin historiography originating in Denmark (including Saxo) and has a clear Danish transmission in the guise of the B manuscripts, but precisely how the work made its way to Denmark or what form its early circulation there took is unknown; particular attention has been given to the so-called Sorø manuscript, which is believed to have existed in Denmark in the twelfth century.61
The suggestions above are not exhaustive; they represent merely four ways in which the material can be organized, four pathways that can be taken through it. The focus has primarily been on the production of texts, understood in a broad sense that encompasses copying and translation as well as ‘original’ output, but future work could give greater prominence to readers and the consumption of texts in the literary space; the circulation of Latin works that entered Denmark from the German sphere, on which the case of Adam of Bremen touches, is one example of this. Other approaches could also be added with the help of contemporary projects that explore the writing of literary history outside a national framework. The place-based ‘itineraries […] drawn [p. 120]Beginning of page 120 together through links of travel, trade, religious practice, language, and literary exchange’ employed in the recent Europe: A Literary History, 1348–1418, edited by David Wallace, are just one possibility.62 Given that not a single location in modern-day Denmark features in the anthology,63 it would be all the more rewarding to trace such currents and connections in the case of locations such as Odense.64 That city has already figured several times in the preceding pages, from the schra of the Elende Lav, to the printer Johan Snell, to Brandis’s print of the Denscke Kroneke. We might add to this the adaptation of Alanus de Rupe from Latin into Danish by an Odense priest, Herr Michael, in 1496. He was commissioned by the consort of King John of Denmark, Christina of Saxony, who was also active in the mediation of cultural activity more widely, such as — if one is concerned to draw links with Art History — supporting the workshop of the German artist Claus Berg, likewise in Odense.65
It would ultimately be important to bring further languages into the picture as well, particularly if we consider the extent of the areas under Danish control at one time or another in the Middle Ages.66 [p. 121]Beginning of page 121 The question of geographical and chronological demarcation would require a separate discussion, but the Kalmar Union (1397–1523), at least, must be mentioned briefly. Several of the texts we have encountered enter into connections with the Swedish textual tradition in this context. A Swedish translation of the Gesta Danorum pa danskæ, for instance, is preserved in a Sammelhandschrift (Stockholm, Royal Library, D 4) that was probably produced in Vadstena in the first half of the fifteenth century and contains material in Swedish, Latin, and Low German.67 Dværgekongen Laurin, meanwhile, is preserved in a manuscript (Stockholm, Royal Library, K 47; c. 1500), apparently written by scribes from Jutland, that also includes the Danish versions of the Old Swedish Eufemiavisor (Eufemia Poems), which were crucial in the mediation of courtly narrative and culture to Denmark.68 Finally, one of the questions raised by the Rimkrønike is whether it or the Swedish Lilla rimkrönika (Little Rhyme Chronicle; fifteenth century) should [p. 122]Beginning of page 122 be credited with primacy in introducing the monologue form.69 Recognizing the roughly contemporary circulation of historical writing in German in addition to the question of Swedish influence promises a better understanding of the environment in which this canonical work of Danish vernacular historiography appeared.
A project of this kind would require a substantial amount of research both to assemble the material to be considered and to establish some of the basic facts about it — or at least to acknowledge uncertainty where it is present. In the Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle, one of the standard reference works in the field, for instance, the Mittelniederdeutsche Reimchronik mentioned earlier is categorically stated to have originated in Germany.70 This is not an unreasonable assertion per se, particularly if one assumes completion of the work in chronological proximity to the final events mentioned in it.71 Apart from the modern locations of the manuscripts, however, no indication is given of the Danish textual networks in which the work participated and without which its context cannot be fully understood. Seemingly straightforward statements of this kind become problematic when considered from the broader perspective advocated in this chapter. A reassessment of them depends on philological basic research that may not necessarily be glamorous or easily ‘marketable’, but is nonetheless necessary if an accurate understanding of the wider picture is to be obtained. Some of the relevant information and material is readily accessible, some of it less so; it is scattered across well-known handbooks and niche specialist literature from a number of medieval philologies, as well as other disciplines such as History and Religious Studies. Even this work — let alone that of subsequent interpretation, presentation, and analysis — is likely to go beyond what could be fully accomplished by a single person on their own.
What I have sought to do here is to demonstrate the breadth and inherent interest of the material, as well as the need finally to do justice to it; in realizing that objective, collaboration and sharing would be [p. 123]Beginning of page 123 crucial. The result would not only provide a much-needed understanding of medieval literary culture in a neglected part of northern Europe, but also allow connections to be drawn with more far-reaching debates. One could ask, for instance, whether the one-sided focus on Danish alongside and/or in opposition to Latin in existing literary histories is related to instrumentalization of the concept of a ‘vernacular’ in a colonialist context.72 Such questions, in turn, point to the relevance of this project beyond Medieval Studies alone. My ‘home’ discipline, German Studies, for example, is characterized by its own concern with openness in the guise of calls such as that — to quote just one initiative — to embrace ‘texts in or about German culture […] written by or about under-represented and historically marginalised groups, with the aim of helping to expand and diversify the German Studies curriculum’.73 The relevance of the sources discussed here to themes such as marginalization, migration, multilingualism, and diversity, and to the teaching and study of texts outside the traditional canon, ought to be obvious.74 It is in wider contexts such as this that the project I envisage is ultimately to be understood.
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