Gorm learns of the death of his son Canute

Gorm the Old (, ), also called Gorm the Sleepy (), was King of Denmark from c.900- c.940.

The son of Danish king Harthacnut Gorm was born in the late 800s, and died in 958 according to dendrochronological studies of the wood in his burial chamber.

Gorm was "old" in the sense that he has always been considered the traditional ancestral "head" of the Danish monarchy, the oldest in Europe^[1] Gorm the Old did not live an especially long life, but his rule of 40 years, c.900- c.940, is the longest of any Danish Viking monarch. Saxo Grammaticus in the Gesta Danorum asserts that Gorm was older than other monarchs and having lived so long was blind by the time his son Canute was killed. Records of earlier kings either were not available or discounted by royal historians. Gorm's name appears on the Jelling Stones and that was definitive proof historians of the past needed.

Gorm married Thyra, the daughter of one of the regional chiefs, probably from southern Jutland. Claims that Thyra was a daughter of King Harald Klak have been discounted due to the impossibility of the ages of the persons involved. Thyra was the daughter of Aethelred, King of England according to the Gesta Danorum.^[2] Gorm raised one of the great burial mounds at Jelling for her and the oldest Jelling stones to her. Gorm was the father of two sons, Canute (Knud) and Harald, later King Harald Bluetooth.

His ancestry descends from Danes who ruled East Anglia, one of whom was named Guthrum, a form of the name Gorm. His father came to Denmark around 916 or 917 and deposed the young king Sigtrygg Gnupasson; when Harthaknut died, Gorm ascended the throne. Claims that he took it by force, or that he only ruled part of the peninsula of Jutland are almost certainly erroneous. Gorm's great-great-grandson king Sweyn Estridsson referred to both Gorm and his father as kings of (all of) Denmark, not just parts of the country.

His wife, Thyra, is credited with the completion of the Danevirk, a wall between Denmark's southern border and its unfriendly Saxon neighbors to the south. The wall was not new, but it was expanded with a ditch and earthen foundation topped by a timber stockade above it. The Danevirk ran between the Schlien and the Trende River across what is now Schleswig.^[3] Queen Thyra was memorialized after her death on one of the stones at Jelling by her husband. She was simply Denmark's Salvation (Danmarks Bod)

Arild Hvitfeldt's Danmarks Riges Krřnike explains how Gorm died. Of his two sons, Gorm preferred the eldest, Canute, to Harald to the extent that he made an oath that the messenger who brought news of Canute's death would be executed. The two sons were Vikings in the truest sense, departing Denmark each summer to raid and pillage. Harald came back to the royal enclosure at Jelling with the news that Canute had been killed in an attempt to capture Dublin, Ireland. Canute was shot with a coward's arrow while watching some games at night. No one would tell the king in view of the oath the king had made. Queen Thyra ordered the royal hall hung with black cloth and that no one was to say a single word. When Gorm entered the hall, he was astonished and asked what the mourning colors meant. Queen Thyra spoke up: "Lord King, You had two falcons, one white and the other gray. The white one flew far afield and was set upon by other birds which tore off its beautiful feathers and is now useless to you. Meanwhile the gray falcon continues to catch fowl for the king's table." Gorm understood immediately the Queen's metaphor and cried out, "My son is surely dead, since all of Denmark mourns!" "You have said it, your majesty," Thyra announced, "Not I, but what you have said is true." According to the story Gorm was so grieved by Canute's death that he died the following day. This would seem to contradict information on the Jelling Stones which seem to point to Queen Thyra's death before Gorm died. Historians have always suggested that Gorm was buried first in Queen Thyra's grave mound at Jelling, and later moved by his son, Harald Bluetooth, into the original wooden church in Jelling.

His skeleton is believed to have been found at the site of the first Christian church of Jelling. During the reign of Gorm, most Danes still worshipped the Norse gods, but during the reign of Gorm's son, Harold Bluetooth, Denmark officially converted to Christianity. Harald left the hill where Gorm had originally been interred as a memorial.

Runic stone for Thyra, back side

Runic stone for Thyra, front side

References

External links

• Northvegr (Scandinavian) - A History of the Vikings (Search)
• Vikingworld (Danish) - King Gorm the Old and Queen Thyra
• Treffpunkt-Howaldt: Runensteine in Jelling (DK) (German)

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