ABSTRACT
During the late twelfth and the early thirteenth century, the socio-political constellations in Scandinavia changed fundamentally, accompanied by the rapid expansion of historiography. A comparative analysis of heroic pasts constructed during this period is revealing with regard to the ways the elites dealt with their surroundings, expressed normative ideas and created symbolic power. The comparison between texts from Denmark and kings’ sagas demonstrates that the strategies of glorification and evaluation are carefully chosen and that the constructed otherness of the past is part of its functionality. While in Denmark the dominant group creates a monological discourse favouring and stabilising their position, texts from Norway and Iceland mirror a struggle for power. It is demonstrated through an analysis of crusader and missionary history that two factions tried to create symbolic capital through prestigious history and thereby coined a repertoire of narrative motifs. A closer look at the peculiar semantics of the distant past in Gesta Danorum, especially the concept of the patria, shows that the past served as a basis for the evaluation of ongoing transformations. As the development of power relations and legal order is negotiated through the constellations evoked in these narratives, the past becomes a political resource.
