The Gesta Danorum (Books I-IX) on Amleth

The Danish History, > Book Three.

• attestation: Amleth feigned madness to conceal his intelligence and protect himself from his uncle Feng

  "he chose to feign dulness, and pretend an utter lack of wits. This cunning course not only concealed his intelligence but ensured his safety"

• attestation: Amleth sat by the fire shaping wooden crooks with barbs hardened in the flames, saying he was preparing javelins to avenge his father

  "He used at times to sit over the fire, and, raking up the embers with his hands, to fashion wooden crooks, and harden them in the fire"

• attestation: Feng's court devised a test: placing a fair woman in Amleth's path to see if lust would betray his sanity

  "His wiliness (said these) would be most readily detected, if a fair woman were put in his way in some secluded place, who should provoke his mind to the temptations of love"

• attestation: Amleth's foster-brother, assigned to entrap him, secretly tried to warn him instead

  "Among these chanced to be a foster-brother of Amleth, who had not ceased to have regard to their common nurture"

• attestation: Amleth mounted his horse backwards, facing the tail and using the reins on it, to appear foolish and evade the test

  "he deliberately set himself in such a fashion that he turned his back to the neck and faced about, fronting the tail; which he proceeded to encompass with the reins"

• attestation: Amleth saw a wolf and when told it was a colt, cursed Feng's stud by saying there were too few of that kind fighting

  "a wolf crossed his path amid the thicket. When his companions told him that a young colt had met him, he retorted, that in Feng's stud there were too few of that kind fighting"

• attribution: Amleth called a ship's rudder the right thing to carve the sea, which he called a huge ham

  "his companions found the rudder of a ship, which had been wrecked, and said they had discovered a huge knife. "This," said he, "was the right thing to carve such a huge ham""

• attestation: Amleth's foster-brother warned him of the seduction trap by attaching a straw to a gadfly's tail and directing it toward him

  "he found a straw on the ground and fastened it underneath the tail of a gadfly that was flying past; which he then drove towards the particular quarter where he knew Amleth to be"

• attestation: Amleth interpreted the gadfly's straw as a warning, then took the woman to an impenetrable fen and made her swear secrecy

  "Amleth saw the gadfly, espied with curiosity the straw which it wore embedded in its tail, and perceived that it was a secret warning to beware of treachery"

• attestation: When asked where he had lain with the woman, Amleth truthfully said upon the hoof of a beast, a cockscomb, and a ceiling, having collected fragments of these beforehand

  "he said that he had rested upon the hoof of a beast of burden, upon a cockscomb, and also upon a ceiling. For, when he was starting into temptation, he had gathered fragments of all these things, in order to avoid lying"

• attestation: The woman denied the act had occurred, and the escorts confirmed they had not witnessed anything

  "The maiden, too, when questioned on the matter, declared that he had done no such thing; and her denial was the more readily credited when it was found that the escort had not witnessed the deed"

• attestation: Amleth detected the hidden spy by jumping on the straw, drove his sword through the lump beneath, then killed, dismembered, and boiled the body, feeding it to swine through the sewer

  "Feeling a lump beneath his feet, he drove his sword into the spot, and impaled him who lay hid. Then he dragged him from his concealment and slew him. Then, cutting his body into morsels, he seethed it in boiling water"

• attribution: Amleth confronted his mother Gerutha, condemning her incestuous marriage to her husband's murderer

  "Most infamous of women; dost thou seek with such lying lamentations to hide thy most heavy guilt? Wantoning like a harlot, thou hast entered a wicked and abominable state of wedlock, embracing with incestuous bosom thy husband's slayer"

• attribution: Amleth revealed to his mother that his madness was feigned and that he was waiting for the right moment to avenge his father

  "not idly do I wear the mask of folly; for I doubt not that he who destroyed his brother will riot as ruthlessly in the blood of his kindred. Therefore it is better to choose the garb of dulness than that of sense"

• attestation: Amleth's reproaches redeemed Gerutha and turned her toward virtue

  "With such reproaches he rent the heart of his mother and redeemed her to walk in the ways of virtue"

• attestation: When asked about the missing spy, Amleth truthfully said the man had gone to the sewer and been devoured by swine, but everyone took it as madman's babble

  "Amleth, among others, was asked in jest if he had come on any trace of him, and replied that the man had gone to the sewer, but had fallen through its bottom and been stifled by the floods of filth"

• attestation: Amleth found the wooden letter, erased the death sentence, and substituted orders to execute his two companions and marry the British king's daughter to himself

  "he erased all the writing on the surface, substituted fresh characters, and so, changing the purport of the instructions, shifted his own doom upon his companions"

• attestation: Amleth told his mother to hang the hall with woven knots and hold pretended obsequies for him in one year, promising to return

  "Amleth, on departing, gave secret orders to his mother to hang the hall with woven knots, and to perform pretended obsequies for him a year thence"

• attribution: Amleth refused the royal banquet in Britain, detecting that the bread was tainted with blood, the liquor had a tang of iron, and the meat reeked of a human corpse

  "the bread was flecked with blood and tainted; that there was a tang of iron in the liquor; while the meats of the feast reeked of the stench of a human carcase"

• attribution: Amleth declared the British king had the eyes of a slave and the queen had shown three behaviors of a bondmaid

  "the king had the eyes of a slave, and that the queen had in three ways shown the behaviour of a bondmaid"

• attestation: Investigation confirmed Amleth's claims: the bread was made from grain grown on a field of ancient bones, the pork came from hogs that had eaten a robber's corpse, and the drink was brewed from water above buried rusted swords

  "not far off was a field, covered with the ancient bones of slaughtered men, and still bearing plainly all the signs of ancient carnage"

• attestation: The British king's mother confessed under threat that the king was the offspring of a slave, confirming Amleth's observation about his eyes

  "when he threatened that he would have the truth out of her by a trial, he was told that he was the offspring of a slave"

• attestation: Amleth identified the queen's slavish descent from three signs: she muffled her head in her mantle, gathered up her gown for walking, and picked food from her teeth with a splinter

  "he had noted in her three blemishes showing the demeanor of a slave; first, she had muffled her head in her mantle as handmaids do; next, that she had gathered up her gown for walking; and thirdly, that she had first picked out with a splinter"

• attestation: The British king, awed by Amleth's wisdom, gave him his daughter in marriage

  "the king adored the wisdom of Amleth as though it were inspired, and gave him his daughter to wife"

• attestation: The king hanged Amleth's two companions per the altered letter's instructions

  "in order to fulfil the bidding of his friend, he hanged Amleth's companions on the morrow"

• attestation: Amleth feigned offence at their execution, received gold as compensation, melted it, and secretly poured it into hollowed sticks

  "Amleth, feigning offence, treated this piece of kindness as a grievance, and received from the king, as compensation, some gold, which he afterwards melted in the fire, and secretly caused to be poured into some hollowed sticks"

• attestation: After a year in Britain, Amleth returned to Jutland carrying only sticks filled with gold

  "When he had passed a whole year with the king he obtained leave to make a journey, and returned to his own land, carrying away of all his princely wealth and state only the sticks which held the gold"

• attestation: Amleth arrived at his own funeral feast in filthy disguise, astonishing all who thought him dead

  "Covered with filth, he entered the banquet-room where his own obsequies were being held, and struck all men utterly aghast"

• attestation: When asked about his companions Amleth held up the gold-filled sticks and said 'Here is both the one and the other' -- a double meaning pointing at the weregild of the slain

  "he pointed to the sticks he was carrying, and said, "Here is both the one and the other.""

• attestation: Amleth plied the nobles with drink until they passed out, then pinned them under his mother's woven hangings using his fire-hardened barbed stakes

  "he went to the lords and plied them heavily with draught upon draught, and drenched them all so deep in wine, that their feet were made feeble with drunkenness"

• attestation: Amleth set fire to the palace, burning all the trapped nobles alive

  "he set fire to the palace. The flames spread, scattering the conflagration far and wide"

• attestation: Amleth went to Feng's chamber, swapped swords so Feng could not draw, then woke him and told him his nobles were burning

  "he went to the chamber of Feng, who had before this been conducted by his train into his pavilion; plucked up a sword that chanced to be hanging to the bed, and planted his own in its place"

The Danish History, > Book Three. > Endnotes:

• attestation: Shakespeare's Hamlet is derived from the Amleth story told by Saxo

  "Shakespere's tragedy, "Hamlet", is derived from this story"

The Danish History, > Book Four.

• attestation: After killing Feng, Amleth hid until he could gauge the public reaction, then found the people divided between anger and gratitude

  "Some were seized with open anger, others with grief, and some with secret delight. One party bewailed the death of their leader, the other gave thanks that the tyranny of the fratricide was now laid at rest"

• attestation: Amleth summoned those loyal to his father's memory and addressed the assembly

  "Summoning those in whom he knew the memory of his father to be fast-rooted, he went to the assembly and there made a speech"

• attribution: Amleth gave a speech to the assembly declaring Feng a fratricide who enslaved them, and claiming he alone avenged his father and freed the nation

  "Yea, I own that I have taken vengeance for my country and my father. Your hands were equally bound to the task which mine fulfilled. What it would have beseemed you to accomplish with me, I achieved alone"

• attribution: Amleth urged the people to burn Feng's body and scatter his ashes without burial, denying him any memorial

  "haste up speedily, heap the pyre, burn up the body of the wicked, consume away his guilty limbs, scatter his sinful ashes"

• attribution: Amleth recounted his sufferings — persecution by his stepfather, scorn from his mother, contempt from friends — and asked the people to acknowledge his service and grant him the throne

  "I, pursued to the death by my stepfather, scorned by my mother, spat upon by friends, have passed my years in pitiable wise"

• attribution: Amleth revealed that his feigned madness was a deliberate stratagem to conceal his plan of vengeance

  "to hide my purpose of revenge and to veil my wit, I counterfeited a listless bearing; I feigned dulness; I planned a stratagem"

• attestation: Amleth was appointed king of Denmark by prompt and general acclaim after his speech

  "he was appointed king by prompt and general acclaim"

• attestation: Amleth equipped three vessels and returned to Britain, now magnificently outfitted with gilded shields and the flower of warriors

  "Amleth equipped three vessels, and went back to Britain to see his wife and her father"

• attestation: Amleth had a shield painted with the complete narrative of his life's exploits, from his father's murder through his revenge

  "He also had a shield made for him, whereon the whole series of his exploits, beginning with his earliest youth, was painted in exquisite designs"

• attestation: The King of Britain learned Amleth had killed Feng and was torn between his bond to avenge Feng and love for his daughter and son-in-law

  "Feng and he had determined of old, by a mutual compact, that one of them should act as avenger of the other"

• attestation: The British king chose his oath over kinship and decided to engineer Amleth's death indirectly by sending him to woo a murderously cruel Scottish queen

  "he preferred to execrate his revenge by the hand of another, wishing to mask his secret crime with a show of innocence"

• attestation: The Scottish queen's spy stole Amleth's narrative shield and the letter from his coffer while he slept

  "One of these, being quick-witted, slipped past the sentries, pertinaciously made his way up, and took away the shield"

• attestation: The queen read the shield and letter, recognized Amleth as the avenger of his father, and replaced the British king's marriage proposal with one requesting her own marriage to Amleth

  "she rubbed out all the writing; for wedlock with the old she utterly abhorred, and desired the embraces of young men"

• attestation: Amleth feigned sleep to recapture the spy returning his shield, then seized and detained him

  "Amleth leapt up, seized him, and detained him in bonds"

• attestation: Amleth married Hermutrude and departed for Britain with a Scottish military escort

  "Amleth was overjoyed at the gracious speech of the maiden, fell to kissing back, and returned her close embrace"

• attribution: Amleth's British wife warned him of her father's treacherous intentions, choosing loyalty to her husband over her father

  "Bethink thee, then, that thou must beware of thy father-in-law, for thou hast thyself reaped the harvest of thy mission"

• attestation: Amleth's British wife had a son pledging their marriage and declared she loved him despite the insult of a second wife

  "she had a son as a pledge of their marriage, and regard for him, if nothing else, must have inclined his mother to the affection of a wife"

• attestation: The King of Britain attacked Amleth under the porch but his javelin was deflected by Amleth's mail shirt

  "the king attacked him just under the porch of the folding doors, and would have thrust him through with his javelin, but that the hard shirt of mail threw off the blade"

• attestation: Amleth propped dead soldiers upright on stakes, set others on horseback, and tied yet others to stones, creating a phantom army that terrified the Britons into fleeing

  "He put stakes under some of the dead bodies of his comrades to prop them up, set others on horseback like living men, and tied others to neighbouring stones"

• attestation: The Britons fled before the army of the dead, and Amleth's forces killed the British king as he retreated

  "The Britons, terrified at the spectacle, fled before fighting, conquered by the dead men whom they had overcome in life"

• attestation: Amleth plundered Britain and returned home with both wives

  "Amleth, triumphant, made a great plundering, seized the spoils of Britain, and went back with his wives to his own land"

• attestation: Amleth first appeared to forgive Wiglek, gifting him spoils, but later attacked and subdued him

  "he presented Wiglek with the richest of his spoils. But afterwards he seized a chance of taking vengeance, attacked him, subdued him"

• attestation: Amleth was slain by Wiglek in battle in Jutland; a plain in Jutland is famous as his burial-place

  "when Amleth had been slain by Wiglek in battle in Jutland, she yielded herself up unasked to be the conqueror's spoil and bride"