Spatial Orientation in Knýtlinga saga

Abstract

The geographical position of Denmark, a state occupying Jutland and several islands in the Baltic Sea, lies on the axes north-south and east-west. But as envisaged in Knýtlinga saga, a text covering Danish history from the tenth to the early thirteenth centuries and written down in the mid-thirteenth century, the entire space of Denmark appears to be rotated 90 degrees counter-clockwise. Analysis of all the available source material leads to the conclusion that the world picture of the early North-Germanic peoples contained the idea of the Danish lands divided into southern areas (Jutland) and northern areas (Fyn, Zealand, and Skane). In this paper the author discusses the theory of ‘Scandinavian shifted orientation’ and proposes a hypothetical explanation of how the picture of Denmark described above could have become embodied in Knýtlinga saga.