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Updated: June 14, 2025
Archbishop Absalon closed his eyes on St. Benedict's Day, March 21, 1201, in the cloister at Sorö which Sir Asker built and where he lived his last days in peace.
Both writers, servants of the brilliant Bishop Absalon, and probably set by him upon their task, proceed, like Geoffrey of Monmouth, by gathering and editing mythical matter. This they more or less embroider, and arrive in due course insensibly at actual history. Both, again, thread their stories upon a genealogy of kings in part legendary.
It is the sailor, the warrior, the leader of men one sees through all the troubled years of his royal friend's life. Now the Danish fleet is caught in the inland sea before Stettin, unable to make its way out, and already the heathen hosts are shouting their triumph on shore. It is Absalon, then, who finds the way and, as one would expect, he forces it.
Each must do as his conscience dictated, unhindered. And with that he laid on the table four books with blank leaves and bade them write down their names in them, each for his own choice, to get the matter right on the record. The brethren thanked him kindly and all voted "nicely together" for Absalon. So three of the books were wasted. But presently Saxo found good use for them.
And in a way he was shepherding his flock there, if it was with a scourge; for, many years before, a Danish king had punished the Wends in their own home and laid their lands under the See of Roskilde, though little good it did them or any one else then. But when Absalon had got his grip, there were days when he baptized as many as a thousand of them into the true faith.
The archbishop in a rage summoned Absalon and bade him join him in a rising against the King. Absalon's answer is worthy the man and friend: "My oath to you I will keep, and in this wise, that I will not counsel you to your own undoing. Whatever your cause against the King, war against him you cannot, and succeed.
But we have seen that Absalon died in 1201, and that Bk. xi, at any rate, was not written after 1202. It almost certainly follows that the latter books were written in Absalon's life; but the Preface, written after them, refers to events in 1208. But this is a point which there is no real means of settling.
As to the order in which its parts were composed, it is likely that Absalon's original instruction was to write a history of Absalon's own doings. The fourteenth and succeeding books deal with these at disproportionate length, and Absalon, at the expense even of Waldemar, is the protagonist. The latter books are, therefore, to a great extent, Absalon's personally communicated memoirs.
Kjöbenhavn in Danish means "merchants' harbour," and as early as the eleventh century it was a trading centre for foreign merchants attracted by the rich supply of herrings found by the Danish fishermen in the Baltic. Bishop Absalon was the founder of the city.
This custom is not recent, but was observed in ancient and remote ages, as we find in the works of Julius Caesar, who says, "The Britons shave every part of their body except their head and upper lip;" and to render themselves more active, and avoid the fate of Absalon in their excursions through the woods, they are accustomed to cut even the hair from their heads; so that this nation more than any other shaves off all pilosity.
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