Saxo Grammaticus’s Account of the Viking Age Site on the Danish Island of Hjarnø in Gesta Danorum

Abstract

The Kalvestene (calf stones) are a collection of ship settings,1 dated by cremated grave goods to the seventh to tenth century (Broholm 1937, 16–22), on the southern coast of the small island of Hjarnø, off the eastern coast of Jutland (fig. 1). This site is associated with a legend, first recorded in the twelfth century by Saxo Grammaticus in his Gesta Danorum, concerning a legendary king, Hiarni, his rise and fall, and how he came to be buried on the island and the monuments built to commemorate him. From an archaeological point of view, the legend has been problematic. As Jörn Staecker notes, sites associated with legends are especially vulnerable to misinterpretation, since the story tends to frame archaeological perceptions (2005, 3–28).2 Certainly, the account of the site by the antiquarian Ole Worm in 1650 shows clear signs of being influenced by the legend, and the same is true of all