The Danish Mirror
Saxo's Ragnar — the Danish History's Lodbrok
Ragnar from the Danish side
This atlas has already told the story of Ragnar Lodbrok from the Norse Ragnars saga — the legendary serpent-slayer, husband of the hidden Völsung princess Áslaug, who dies defiant in an English snake-pit. Now Saxo Grammaticus gives us Ragnar from the Danish side, in his Latin Gesta Danorum, and the comparison is one of the most instructive in the whole corpus.
For Saxo, Ragnar is not primarily a legend but a king of Denmark in his dynastic line — a real ruler placed in the sequence of Danish monarchs, his wars and conquests recorded as history.[1] Many of the same episodes the Norse saga tells appear here too, sometimes almost identically; but the framing is utterly different. Where the Icelanders shaped Ragnar into tragic legend, the Dane Saxo set him into national history, a link in the chain of kings from whom the Danes of his own day descended. Reading the two side by side shows the same remembered figure pulled in two directions — toward myth in Iceland, toward history in Denmark — and lets the atlas light the Ragnar node from both at once.
The source text · 1
He was succeeded on the throne by RAGNAR. At this time Fro (Frey?), the King of Sweden, after slaying Siward, the King of the Norwegians, put the wives of Siward's kinsfolk in bonds in a brothel, and delivered them to public outrage. When Ragnar heard of this, he went to Norway to avenge his grandfather. As he came, many of the matrons, who had either suffered insult to their persons or feared imminent peril to their chastity, hastened eagerly to his camp in male attire, declaring that they would prefer death to outrage. Nor did Ragnar, who was to punish this reproach upon the women, scorn to use against the author of the infamy the help of those whose shame he had come to avenge. Among them was Ladgerda, a skilled amazon, who, though a maiden, had the courage of a man, and fought in front among the bravest with her hair loose over her shoulders. All-marvelled at her matchless deeds, for her locks flying down her back betrayed that she was a woman.— gesta danorum
Ragnar succeeds to the Danish throne in Saxo's royal line (Elton 1894).
The serpent and the shaggy breeches
The clearest agreement between the two traditions is the story that gives Ragnar his very name. In Saxo, exactly as in the Norse saga, Ragnar desires the princess Thora, whose hand is guarded by a monstrous serpent; many suitors have died trying.[1] Ragnar has himself clad in rough, shaggy garments — hairy hides — as protection against the creature's venom, wades in, and kills it, winning Thora.[2]
And in both sources the same detail follows: afterward his rough hairy clothing is remarked upon, and from it he gets his by-name — loðbrók, 'Shaggy-' or 'Hairy-Breeches'.[2] This is no vague resemblance; it is the same episode, with the same hero, the same serpent, the same protective shaggy dress, the same resulting nickname, told independently in Icelandic and in Danish Latin. When a story matches that closely across two separate traditions, it is strong evidence that the episode is genuinely old — older than either written version, a shared inheritance both the Icelanders and Saxo drew from. The serpent-and-breeches is the firmest single corroboration the atlas has yet found between the Norse and the Latin.
The source text · 2
Afterwards, changing his love, and desiring Thora, the daughter of the King Herodd, to wife, Ragnar divorced himself from Ladgerda; for he thought ill of her trustworthiness, remembering that she had long ago set the most savage beasts to destroy him. Meantime Herodd, the King of the Swedes, happening to go and hunt in the woods, brought home some snakes, found by his escort, for his daughter to rear. She speedily obeyed the instructions of her father, and endured to rear a race of adders with her maiden hands. Moreover, she took care that they should daily have a whole ox-carcase to gorge upon, not knowing that she was privately feeding and keeping up a public nuisance. The vipers grew up, and scorched the country-side with their pestilential breath. Whereupon the king, repenting of his sluggishness, proclaimed that whosoever removed the pest should have his daughter.— gesta danorum
Ragnar desires Thora, guarded by the serpent (Elton 1894).
After Ragnar had thus triumphed the king scanned his dress closely, and saw that he was rough and hairy; but, above all, he laughed at the shaggy lower portion of his garb, and chiefly the uncouth aspect of his breeches; so that he gave him in jest the nickname of Lodbrog. Also he invited him to feast with his friends, to refresh him after his labours. Ragnar said that he would first go back to the witnesses whom he had left behind. He set out and brought them back, splendidly attired for the coming feast. At last, when the banquet was over, he received the prize that was appointed for the victory. By her he begot two nobly-gifted sons, Radbard and Dunwat. These also had brothers—Siward, Biorn, Agnar, and Iwar.— gesta danorum
Ragnar's rough hairy dress gives him the by-name loðbrók (Elton 1894).
A king of the whole north
Where Saxo diverges most from the Norse is in scale and sobriety. His Ragnar is a conquering Danish king whose campaigns sprawl across the entire northern world: he wars in Sweden, subdues the Saxons and loads them with tribute, fights in the Baltic lands and against the 'Hellespontines' in the east, ravages the Orkneys, lands among the Scots and the Irish.[1] Thora dies of illness, and he marries again; his life is a long chronicle of expeditions and conquests, rebellions and reconquests.
This is Saxo the national historian at work. The Norse saga keeps Ragnar's tale tight and tragic — gold, sons, pride, the snake-pit. Saxo blows it out into the deeds of a great king across decades and territories, a founder-figure for Danish royal power. The legendary core is still there, but it is embedded in something that reads like dynastic history, full of geography and politics and the management of a far-flung realm. The same man who is a doomed legend in Iceland is, in Denmark, a near-imperial monarch — and the difference tells you exactly what each culture wanted its Ragnar to be: Iceland's a hero of fate, Denmark's a builder of the nation.
The source text · 1
Then he summoned Biorn and Erik, ravaged the Orkneys, landed at last on the territory of the Scots, and in a three-days' battle wearied out their king Murial, and slew him. But Ragnar's sons, Dunwat and Radbard, after fighting nobly, were slain by the enemy. So that the victory their father won was stained with their blood. He returned to Denmark, and found that his wife Swanloga had in the meantime died of disease. Straightway he sought medicine for his grief in loneliness, and patiently confined the grief of his sick soul within the walls of his house. But this bitter sorrow was driven out of him by the sudden arrival of Iwar, who had been expelled from the kingdom. For the Gauls had made him fly, and had wrongfully bestowed royal power on a certain Ella, the son of Hame. Ragnar took Iwar to guide him, since he was acquainted with the country, gave orders for a fleet, and approached the harbour called York. Here he disembarked his forces, and after a battle which lasted three days, he made Ella, who had trusted in the valour of the Gauls, desirous to fly. The affair cost much blood to the English and very little to the Danes. Here Ragnar completed a year of conquest, and then, summoning his sons to help him, he went to Ireland, slew its king Melbrik, besieged Dublin, which was filled with wealth of the barbarians, attacked it, and received its surrender. There he lay in camp for a year; and then, sailing through the midland sea, he made his way to the Hellespont. He won signal victories as he crossed all the intervening countries, and no ill-fortune anywhere checked his steady and prosperous advance.— gesta danorum
Ragnar's wide campaigns — Orkneys, Scots, the northern world (Elton 1894).
Iwar's unmoved face
The sons of Ragnar are central to Saxo as to the Norse, and one scene shows the two traditions converging on the same character. When word comes of the catastrophe touching Ragnar's people — through the enmity of Ella in the British Isles — Ragnar's sons react, and Saxo singles out the eldest, Iwar: he is at the games when the news arrives, and he keeps 'an unmoved countenance', mastering his grief utterly, where his brother Siward is so distracted by emotion that he wounds himself.[1]
This is unmistakably the same figure as the Norse Ívarr the Boneless — the coldest and cleverest of the brood, the one whose self-command and strategic mind set him apart. The Norse made his strangeness physical (born boneless, carried into battle); Saxo makes it purely temperamental (the man who shows no feeling and plans while others rage). But the essential character — the brother who turns grief into cold calculation and out-thinks everyone — is identical across both sources. It is another corroboration: not just shared episodes, but a shared personality, remembered the same way in Iceland and Denmark, which is even harder to invent independently than a plot.
The source text · 1
Iwar heard of this disaster as he happened to be looking on at the games. Nevertheless, he kept an unmoved countenance, and in nowise broke down. Not only did he dissemble his grief and conceal the news of his father's death, but he did not even allow a clamour to arise, and forbade the panic-stricken people to leave the scene of the sports. Thus, loth to interrupt the spectacle by the ceasing of the games, he neither clouded his countenance nor turned his eyes from public merriment to dwell upon his private sorrow; for he would not fall suddenly into the deepest melancholy from the height of festal joy, or seem to behave more like an afflicted son than a blithe captain.— gesta danorum
Iwar keeps an unmoved countenance at the games while Siward is distracted (Elton 1894).
The sons take England
The climax in Saxo, as in the Norse, is the sons' vengeance and the conquest of England. Roused by Ella's slaughter of their father's loyal men, the sons bring great fleets against the British Isles. Iwar, finding his force too weak for open battle, wins by guile; Siward and Biorn come up with a fleet of four hundred ships and declare open war on the king; and in the end the brothers prevail, so that Iwar governs England for two years.[1]
Both traditions thus end Ragnar's story the same way: the famous sons crossing to England to avenge their father and seizing power there. This is the point where legend touches recorded history most nearly — for the historical 'Great Heathen Army' that conquered much of England in the 860s was indeed led by men remembered as the sons of Ragnar, Ívarr among them, and the killing of a Northumbrian king named Ælla is recorded in the English sources too. Saxo, writing as a historian, leans into this; the Norse saga keeps it as the fulfilment of Ragnar's dying boast. But both arrive at the conquest of England by Ragnar's sons — and here the doubled myth and history of the atlas nearly merge with the actual viking-age record of the British Isles.
The source text · 1
Iwar governed England for two years. Meanwhile the Danes were stubborn in revolt, and made war, and delivered the sovereignty publicly to a certain SIWARD and to ERIK, both of the royal line. The sons of Ragnar, together with a fleet of 1,700 ships, attacked them at Sleswik, and destroyed them in a conflict which lasted six months. Barrows remain to tell the tale. The sound on which the war was conducted has gained equal glory by the death of Siward. And now the royal stock was almost extinguished, saving only the sons of Ragnar. Then, when Biorn and Erik had gone home, Iwar and Siward settled in Denmark, that they might curb the rebels with a stronger rein, setting Agnar to govern England. Agnar was stung because the English rejected him, and, with the help of Siward, chose, rather than foster the insolence of the province that despised him, to dispeople it and leave its fields, which were matted in decay, with none to till them. He covered the richest land of the island with the most hideous desolation, thinking it better to be lord of a wilderness than of a headstrong country. After this he wished to avenge Erik, who had been slain in Sweden by the malice of a certain Osten. But while he was narrowly bent on avenging another, he squandered his own blood on the foe; and while he was eagerly trying to punish the slaughter of his brother, sacrificed his own life to brotherly love.— gesta danorum
the sons conquer England; Iwar governs it two years (Elton 1894).
One Ragnar, two traditions
Set the two Ragnars side by side and the lesson of the whole Saxo tier comes clear. The episodes that match — the serpent and the shaggy breeches, the cold strategist son, the conquest of England — match so closely, across the gulf between Icelandic legend and Danish Latin history, that they must be genuinely old, a shared inheritance both traditions received and reshaped. The episodes that differ — Iceland's tragic snake-pit death and Völsung bride Áslaug versus Saxo's sober dynastic chronicle of a conquering king — show each culture bending the common material to its own purpose.
For the atlas, that is the gold of cross-source attestation. Ragnar Lodbrok is now a node lit from two languages: the legendary Norse Ragnars saga and Saxo's historical Gesta Danorum, agreeing on the bones and disagreeing on the meaning. Where a figure is remembered in only one source, we cannot tell legend from invention; where he is remembered in two independent traditions, the shared core is bedrock — something that really lodged in the deep memory of the North, however differently Iceland and Denmark chose to tell it. With Balder before him and now Ragnar, the atlas has begun to do what it was built for: not just to retell each tradition, but to let them corroborate each other across the shared nodes, and so to weigh what is old against what is each teller's own.
The source text · 1
After Ragnar had thus triumphed the king scanned his dress closely, and saw that he was rough and hairy; but, above all, he laughed at the shaggy lower portion of his garb, and chiefly the uncouth aspect of his breeches; so that he gave him in jest the nickname of Lodbrog. Also he invited him to feast with his friends, to refresh him after his labours. Ragnar said that he would first go back to the witnesses whom he had left behind. He set out and brought them back, splendidly attired for the coming feast. At last, when the banquet was over, he received the prize that was appointed for the victory. By her he begot two nobly-gifted sons, Radbard and Dunwat. These also had brothers—Siward, Biorn, Agnar, and Iwar.— gesta danorum
the shaggy breeches and the by-name — the firmest Norse/Latin corroboration (Elton 1894).
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