manner in which the Jutes and the men of the islands had made themselves masters of the whole country, from the extreme north of Reid-Gotaland down to the lands of the Saxons.

These Jutes and Danish Goths soon formed a number of small states or kingdoms, ruled over by chiefs who were very aptly called "Smaa-kongar," or small kings, as they had often no larger realm to boast of than the ground on which they and their few followers lay encamped, or the strand on which their boats were moored. The northern name for king, konúngr, was made up of the two words, konr, kind or family, and ungr, youth, and in its earliest sense meant simply a young chief of good birth; and we must, therefore, regard the many Danish kings of whom we hear in early English and Frankish history, as only leaders of small bands of Vikingar, or sea-rovers. By degrees all Scandinavia was split up into these small states, with Smaa-kongar at their head, who ruled without any regard to each other. Petty wars and changes of rule must have been very common in this state of things; but as the different branches of the Danes themselves hardly knew anything of each other in those ages, it is quite impossible, at this distance of time, for us to learn very much of the history of the people. During the fifth and sixth centuries, Danes from the larger islands, and Frisians from the smaller islands of the northern seas, often pillaged the coasts of the Frankish lands, advancing boldly into the interior by means of the rivers, and carrying away with them as many captives and as much booty as their barks would hold. The chroniclers speak of these invaders as the scourge and torment of the poor inhabitants, but they cannot tell us more of the country whence they came than that it was somewhere to the north of their own. It was not till the eighth century that the Frankish writers of annals knew that there were lands north of the Flbe; and long after the victories of Charlemagne in Northern Germany had made known the name of the Danes, the Franks remained in ignorance of the fact that there were any people of the race except those living in the lands of Slesvig and in Jutland.

Before Charlemagne was crowned Emperor of the West, and when he was only plain King Charles of the Frankish terri

tories, he had carried on a war against the Saxons, which lasted thirty years, and ended in the year 777, after much hard fighting, in making the Saxon tribes submit to him and receive baptism. But Wittekind, their chief, although he knew that his people had been beaten, and could never hope to regain their old freedom, would not declare himself a Christian; and, fleeing in all haste, he took refuge with his friend, Siegfred, a king in Jutland, who like himself was a heathen, and worshipped Odin, or Woden. With him Wittekind remained safe for many years, only coming forth from his place of retreat to attack the Frankish troops, until at length, wearied-out with the hopeless struggle, he allowed himself to be signed with the cross in the year 785, and renounced paganism.

. The Danes of Jutland and the Isles.-To these events we owe the first notice of the continental Danes by the Frankish writers of those times, who felt no little surprise that there should be heathen kings near their own frontiers, strong enough to shield the foes of their great ruler, and defy the power of the Christians. But while the Franks thus learnt to know the Danes of Jutland, the people of England were also beginning to be harassed by Danish vikingar, whom they called Ostmanni, or East-men, from the direction whence they had come. The Anglo-Saxon race that had sprung up in Britain, while they retained northern customs and followed northern laws and usages, keeping up through their superstitions the memory of the old worship of Odin even after their conversion to Christianity, seem to have ceased to care for the ancient homes of their forefathers, and to have lost all knowledge of the Reid-Gotaland, from which they had taken their origin, and to which many of the later Danish invaders of England must have belonged. Thus, while the Franks thought all Danes came from North-Elbian lands, the Anglo-Saxons believed they were all islanders.

These two branches of the Danish stock appear for a long time to have been nearly as ignorant as foreigners in regard to their respective histories. Each regarded themselves as the chief people of the country, and each cherished a rich store of national tales, setting forth the power and glory of their kings, and claiming for them direct descent from Odin. Lejre, or Ledra, in the island of Sjælland, was the chief seat of the power

of the eastern Danes, and the kings who ruled there were certainly among the most renowned of the ancient royal heroes of Denmark; but, at the same time, there must have been kings of some importance among the western Danes, as their sagas were equally full of the exploits of kings ruling over the Jutlanders. It is probable that these two Danish branches, before they were united into one nation and brought under one ruler, were entirely independent of each other, and lived under Smaa-kongar, who were perhaps, in some way, tributary to a few greater rulers, of whom the King of Lejre was the chief in the islands; but we do not know where the head-kings in Jutland kept their court.1

PART II.

DENMARK.

Position of Denmark.-Before we begin to discuss the history of Denmark, we must turn to the map of Europe and note the position of the lands occupied by the insular and the continental Danes, which, at a later period, were joined into one kingdom. The Reid-Gotaland of the Northmen-that is, the territories of the western or continental Danes, were included in the long, narrow strip of land which runs almost due north from the mouths of the Elbe to about 57° 45' N. lat., where it terminates, at the extremity of Jutland, in a sharp point of land known as the Skage. This horn-like projection of the German continent, which separates the German Ocean from the Cattegat and the smaller channels of the Baltic, was the Chersonesus Cimbrica of the Romans, and now includes Holstein, Slesvig, and Jutland. The Ey-Gotaland of the Northmen, which was

'The Danes have retained very few of the traditions of Jutland, and their skalds have, in general, chosen the subjects of their songs from the tales and sagas of the islands. It is believed that the story of Amlet, immortalized by Shakespeare under the name of Hamlet, is founded upon some saga referring to a Jutish prince, although, as we know, the scene is laid at Elsinore, in Sjælland. There is no trace of such a story in connection with any prince of the Eastern Danes.

occupied by the eastern or insular Danes of later times, is composed of that group of islands between Sweden and continental Denmark which we know under the names of Sjælland, Funen or Fyen, Laaland, Falster, Langeland, &c. In early times the provinces of Skaania and Bleking, on the eastern or Swedish side of the Sound, formed part of the Danish monarchy; and for many ages after the introduction of Christianity, Lund, the chief town of Skaania, was the see of the primate of Denmark.

The names of almost every island or province of Denmark told the character of the country. Thus, the name of Denmark meaning the darkly-wooded land, reveals the fact that once the land was densely covered with sombre firs. Skaania took its name from its numerous moors and morasses, skaun being a moor, in old Northern; Blecking, which lies along the sea, from blek, a smooth beach; Laaland, from lav, low; Sjælland, from sja or soe, the sea; Langeland, from lange, long-all these names thus showing either the nature or position of the land.

Although the north of Europe remained for so many ages wrapped in darkness as far as the rest of the world was concerned, the people of Scandinavia were early in possession of an immense number of tales, or sagas, as they were called, which pretended to give true accounts of their great kings, vikingar, and heroes from the first settlement of their forefathers in the north. The sagas handed down by Danish skalds from one generation to another, in very early times, have reached us in a more genuine form, perhaps, than those of the Swedes and Norwegians, because all the popular tales that could be collected in Denmark in the twelfth century were then carefully written down, and have since been preserved and put into modern Danish. Denmark owes the preservation of these curious tales of old to a pious monk, Saxo, surnamed Grammaticus, from his being well versed in the knowledge of the Latin language or grammar. Saxo and his friend, Svend Aagesen, were encouraged by their patron, Absalon, primate of Denmark under the Valdemars, to complete a history of their native country, and to collect and write out for that purpose all the songs and tales that were still remembered by the older people. They lived for many years in the monastery of Sorö, near the pre

sent city of Copenhagen, and when Saxo died, in 1204, that is, about five years after our King John had succeeded his brother Richard I. on the throne of England, he left a complete history of Denmark, carried down to his own times, and professing to relate the origin of the kingdom, and to give an account of all the kings who had ruled over the Danes. As, however, we find long lists of the names of princes said to have been great and powerful for ages before the birth of Christ, we cannot put much trust in these records of ancient Danish rulers. Saxo's history is written in Latin and composed of sixteen parts, or books, the first nine of which contain little more than popular traditions. These, however, are so far interesting that they give us a record of what the Danes themselves accepted as their earlier history in the days when Saxo wrote, and on that account, as well as because many of the heroes or demigods, of whom the old monk of Sorö had such wonderful things to tell us, are constantly referred to in Danish literature, we must not pass them wholly by without notice.

Dan the Famous.-According to Saxo, Denmark takes its name from Dan Mykillati, or the Famous, who taught the people many useful arts, and made all the small kings around tributary to him. His last directions were that, after death, his remains should not be burnt, as had always been done in olden times. Accordingly, when he died, his people built a great stone cham ber, in which they laid his body together with his most costly arms, and after killing his favourite horse and placing it fully harnessed by his side, they closed the opening and raised a high mound over the whole. This Dan, we are told, was followed by a long line of descendants, until, after many ages, there ruled a king, known as Frode, "the Peaceful," because in his time peace and plenty prevailed in the north. This golden age was owing to the birth of the Saviour, which, according to the legend, took place during the time of Frode, in whose reign there was neither wrong nor want, nor were there thieves or beggars, so that the good King Frode could leave his golden armlets on the wayside, as he journeyed through his kingdom to hear and make right all causes of dispute among his people, and no man would steal or injure his property. As these armlets were to the wearer a kind of bank, or treasury, men must