Automated Compositional Change Detection in Saxo Grammaticus Gesta Danorum

Kristoffer Laigaard Nielbo; Mads Linnet Perner; Christian  Larsen; Jonas Nielsen; Ditte Laursen

Automated Compositional Change Detection in Saxo Grammaticus Gesta Danorum

Kristoffer Laigaard Nielbo, Mads Linnet Perner, Christian Larsen, Jonas Nielsen, Ditte Laursen

Royal Danish Library

Research output: Contribution to conference › Paper › Research › peer-review

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Abstract

Saxo Grammaticus’ medieval source Gesta Danorum (“Deeds of the Danes”) representsthe beginning of the modern historical research in Denmark. The bipartite composition of Gesta Danorum has however been subject to much academic debate. In particular the nature and location of a transition between early Pre-Christian and late Christian content have given rise to two competing accounts. In this paper, we argue that the debate can be represented as
a problem of intratextual dynamics and we combine models from Information Retrieval and Natural Language Processing with techniques for time series analysis in order to reevaluate the debate. Results indicate that the transition is gradual, starting in book eight and ending in book ten, but that a point-like interpretation is possible in book nine. We argue that the approach exemplifies scalable“automated close reading”, which has multiple applications in text-based
historical research.

Original language	English
Publication date	6 Mar 2019
Number of pages	13
Publication status	Published - 6 Mar 2019
Event	Digital Humanities in the Nordic Countries: 4th Conference - University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark Duration: 6 Mar 2019 → 8 Mar 2019 https://cst.dk/DHN2019/DHN2019.html

Conference

Conference	Digital Humanities in the Nordic Countries
Location	University of Copenhagen
Country/Territory	Denmark
City	Copenhagen
Period	06/03/2019 → 08/03/2019
Internet address	https://cst.dk/DHN2019/DHN2019.html

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29_paperFinal published version, 1.51 MB

http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2364/29_paper.pdfLicence: Other

Cite this

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title = "Automated Compositional Change Detection in Saxo Grammaticus Gesta Danorum",

abstract = "Saxo Grammaticus{\textquoteright} medieval source Gesta Danorum (“Deeds of the Danes”) representsthe beginning of the modern historical research in Denmark. The bipartite composition of Gesta Danorum has however been subject to much academic debate. In particular the nature and location of a transition between early Pre-Christian and late Christian content have given rise to two competing accounts. In this paper, we argue that the debate can be represented asa problem of intratextual dynamics and we combine models from Information Retrieval and Natural Language Processing with techniques for time series analysis in order to reevaluate the debate. Results indicate that the transition is gradual, starting in book eight and ending in book ten, but that a point-like interpretation is possible in book nine. We argue that the approach exemplifies scalable“automated close reading”, which has multiple applications in text-basedhistorical research.",

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T1 - Automated Compositional Change Detection in Saxo Grammaticus Gesta Danorum

AU - Nielbo, Kristoffer Laigaard

AU - Perner, Mads Linnet

AU - Larsen, Christian

AU - Nielsen, Jonas

AU - Laursen, Ditte

PY - 2019/3/6

Y1 - 2019/3/6

N2 - Saxo Grammaticus’ medieval source Gesta Danorum (“Deeds of the Danes”) representsthe beginning of the modern historical research in Denmark. The bipartite composition of Gesta Danorum has however been subject to much academic debate. In particular the nature and location of a transition between early Pre-Christian and late Christian content have given rise to two competing accounts. In this paper, we argue that the debate can be represented asa problem of intratextual dynamics and we combine models from Information Retrieval and Natural Language Processing with techniques for time series analysis in order to reevaluate the debate. Results indicate that the transition is gradual, starting in book eight and ending in book ten, but that a point-like interpretation is possible in book nine. We argue that the approach exemplifies scalable“automated close reading”, which has multiple applications in text-basedhistorical research.

AB - Saxo Grammaticus’ medieval source Gesta Danorum (“Deeds of the Danes”) representsthe beginning of the modern historical research in Denmark. The bipartite composition of Gesta Danorum has however been subject to much academic debate. In particular the nature and location of a transition between early Pre-Christian and late Christian content have given rise to two competing accounts. In this paper, we argue that the debate can be represented asa problem of intratextual dynamics and we combine models from Information Retrieval and Natural Language Processing with techniques for time series analysis in order to reevaluate the debate. Results indicate that the transition is gradual, starting in book eight and ending in book ten, but that a point-like interpretation is possible in book nine. We argue that the approach exemplifies scalable“automated close reading”, which has multiple applications in text-basedhistorical research.

M3 - Paper

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EP - 332

T2 - Digital Humanities in the Nordic Countries

Y2 - 6 March 2019 through 8 March 2019

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