The Chronicon Lethrense, or Lejre Chronicle, holds a special position in Scandinavian literature as the oldest surviving historiographical work presenting legendary pre-history1. Conventionally dated to the late twelfth century2, it predates later literary efforts such as those of Saxo Grammaticus’s monumental Gesta Danorum, Sven Aggesen’s Brevis Historia regum Dacie and the Icelandic fornaldarsögur. The large shadows cast by these latter works, and in particular by Saxo’s towering achievement, have meant that the Chronicon Lethrense, despite its fountain head position, has been largely sidelined in Scandinavian literary history. This is all the more remarkable when one considers the text’s unconventional vision of legendary history which deviates considerably from the form it acquired in Saxo’s telling and thus provides a different vision of Danish prehistory. Another factor that has contributed to the relative obscurity of the text is that it has not been preserved as an independent, standalone work. Instead, it is incorporated into the Annales Lundenses where it appears before the entry for the year 768. However, stylistic and other factors indicate that the preservation context of the Chronicon Lethrense differs from its original context of creation. The Chronicon Lethrense can thus be considered an interpolation into the Annales Lundenses. The chronicle’s dubious status as an element of the Annales led the most recent editor of the annals to excise the Chronicon Lethrense from his edition of the text3.
In the following, a brief introduction to the contents of the text, its transmission and the central scholarship on the text will be provided. While scholars commenting on the Chronicon Lethrense have pointed to a strong anti-German sentiment in the text, the main argument of this article is that the real concern of the Chronicon Lethrense is the relationship between the Danes and the Swedes.
Annalistic texts are structured around the steady progression of time and most events recorded in the Annales Lundenses are listed as having taken place in a particular year. The Chronicon Lethrense, on the other hand, follows historiographical conventions by eschewing any precise dating of events. The text opens with a story (or myth) of the origin of the Danish kingdom and continues by presenting a dynastic history of the Danish kingdom through some fifteen reigns, from the founding father King Dan to King Hethæ (Heiðr), a female standard bearer, who, following the defeat of Haraldus Hyldetan (Haraldr hilditǫnn) in the Battle of Brawel (Brávǫllr), ruled the Danes at the mercy of the Swedish king Ring (Hringr)4.
The foundational story is said to have played out “in the time of David (in etate Dauid)”. Martin Clarentius Gertz, the most recent editor of the Chronicon Lethrense, suggested that “in the time of David” should be taken as a vague “a long time ago5”, but medieval readers may have taken this quite literally, and the dating serves to anchor local history in the global as it was understood at the time6. The endpoint of the chronicle is marked by the aftermath of the Battle of Brávǫllr. This momentous legendary battle is described in much greater detail in Saxo and the Vernacular Old Norse tradition, both of which place it towards the end of the legendary period7, in the generation preceding Ragnarr loðbókr. Saxo, in particular, describes this battle in cataclysmic terms that may evoke the Ragnarǫk event of Norse mythology, and although the battle was fought before Christianity had begun to make inroads in Scandinavia, it could be conceived of as a spectacular culmination of the pre-Christian age before the dawn of a new, Christian, era.
In this context, it may well be worth noting that even though the Chronicon Lethrense relates events that played out long before the conversion to Christianity, the ancient Danes are notably devoid of religious beliefs and are neither described as pagans nor as Christians8. The text makes no mention of any gods, whether pagan or otherwise, nor does it reference sacrifices or any other kind of rituals that can be interpreted as being of a religious nature. The closest it comes to depicting pre-Christian customs is when kings are said to have been buried in mounds. However, the language used to describe these burials is intentionally neutral9. Other early texts, such as those of Saxo Grammaticus and Sven Aggesen, also downplay the traditional religion of the ancient Danes. However, when comparing events recounted in the Chronicon Lethrense with parallel accounts in Gesta Danorum or vernacular Norse sagas, one gets the clear impression that those responsible for shaping the Chronicon Lethrense either deliberately redacted all references to religion in their source materials or that they were unaware of the main aspects of the pre-Christian worldview. A notable example of this is found in the varying accounts of the fall of Haraldr hilditǫnn in the Battle of Brávǫllr where a central role in the plot is usually assigned to the pre-Christian deity Óðinn: In Saxo’s version, Haraldus’s (Haraldr’s) entire life, from conception to death, unfolds under the auspices of Othinus (Óðinn) in whose power it is to grant or deny victory10. The vernacular Sǫgubrot af fornkonungum, which is believed to be a (somewhat revised) fragment of the lost 12th century Skjöldunga saga, similarly assigns to Óðinn a pivotal part in the battle11. The Chronicon Lethrense, on the other hand, presents the battle as an entirely human affair without any supernatural involvement. While other texts attempt to exculpate the Scandinavians of old for having fallen prey to clever deceivers12, the Chronicle follows a strategy of almost completely avoiding the topic of religion. For this reason, it has been deemed appropriate to refer to the time period in which the chronicle plays out as legendary rather than pre-Christian.
The idea of composing a chronicle that only deals with kings of Denmark who ruled in legendary antiquity and does not recount the history of the conversion to Christianity and subsequent kings was unusual for the time. One may also recall that Adam of Bremen wrote that in his opinion:
It is just as pointless to examine the deeds of those who did not believe [in the Christian God] as it is impious to pass over the salvation of those who did believe, and the deeds of those through whom they came to believe13.
For this reason, the suggestion that the Chronicon Lethrense was conceived as an addendum, or prequel, to the Chronicon Roskildense, which begins with the baptism of Klakk-Haraldr in 826, makes very good sense14. However, the two texts are not preserved in the same manuscripts, and although the Chronicon Lethrense’s characterization of King Snyo (Snjó) is clearly related to the Chronicon Roskildense’s description of Eiríkr eymuni15, the exact relationship between the two passages cannot be determined.
The Chronicon Lethrense does not have a programmatic introduction where the author lays out the impetus and aims of his work. However, since Jørgen Olrik’s brief study of the text in 1899, the general consensus has been that the text is characterized by a strong national sentiment and that the primary antagonist of the Danish kingdom is the “powerful neighbor to the south”:
The strong national current that runs through the chronicle […] points to the same time [i.e. the early Valdemar period] especially when it is taken into account that the national feeling is strongly hostile towards the powerful neighbor to the south and especially towards the German emperor16.
More recently, Anders Leegaard Knudsen (200017) and Sebastian Maskel Andersen (201218) have also emphasized a pronounced anti-German bias in the text, a perspective shared by almost everyone else who has written about it19. Such sentiments are not uncommon in Danish historiography composed around the turn of the 13th century. They are amply attested in the writings of Sven Aggesen and Saxo Grammaticus and can probably be seen as a reaction to the intense pressure on the Danish kingdom exerted by the Holy Roman Empire from the 1150s onwards. Helge Toldberg took one step in a different direction and claimed that the text balances its hatred of the Germans with a highly unusual admiration of the Swedes20. However, “Germans” or their equivalents are only mentioned on two occasions in the text21, and an impartial reading of the Chronicon Lethrense as the Latin text is preserved will find that the main adversary of the Danish kings is not found to the south of the border, but in the northeast. The Chronicon Lethrense can, in fact, be read as an account of the continuous, heroic, but ultimately futile and unsuccessful struggle of a Danish dynasty to break free from Swedish overlordship. This eastern orientation of the chronicle makes good sense if one considers that it is preserved in manuscripts originating from Lund, in the eastern part of the Danish kingdom, far from the southern border, but correspondingly closer to the Swedish kingdom.
The eastern orientation of the chronicle can partly explain why the Chronicon, or at least a version of it, was translated into Swedish in the late Middle Ages. This translation, dated to ca. 1450, was last published under the heading Een deel aff danske krönike j hedendomen (A part of the Danish Chronicle in heathendom) by Gustav Edvard Klemming22. In this Swedish version of the Chronicon Lethrense, the outlook differs somewhat from that of the Latin text, and one might even say that it recounts Swedish attempts at keeping the Danes, their insubordinate vassals, under their thumb. While Germans were never the focal point of the Latin text, they have receded even further from the center of attention in the Swedish translation.
These differing attitudes show that the Chronicon Lethrense must be considered a dynamic text. Ideological emphases have shifted, or have been shifted, across the history of the text and its various versions. In discussing the text and its outlook, one should therefore take care to distinguish between distinct layers of textual history. Two stages are preserved: 1) The Latin Chronicon Lethrense as preserved in three manuscripts of the Annales Lundenses23; 2) The Swedish Een deel aff danske krönike j hedendomen, preserved in Stockholm D 26 (mid-15th century) and other manuscripts as an addendum to Prosaiska krönikan24. Additionally, it seems likely that at least one earlier version existed independently of the Annales Lundenses25. Any statements about the overall sentiment of the text should therefore be qualified by indicating which version of the text is being discussed.
In what follows, a few examples will be given that highlight the competitive relationship between Danes and Swedes in the Latin and the vernacular Swedish versions of the texts. As the two accounts of Danish antiquity have generally been overshadowed or pushed aside by Saxo’s monumental history, they will be presented alongside examples from his text to show how the distant past and the dynamics between Denmark and its neighbors have been reshaped and reconceived over the centuries. The passages presented here provide little concrete evidence that Saxo knew the Chronicon Lethrense (or vice versa), but Saxo is well known to treat his source materials with considerable freedom, and this could well have obscured his reliance on the text26.
It is convenient to begin with Dan, the eponymous founding figure of the Danes. In the time of David, so the Chronicon Lethrense, Denmark, understood as Jutland, Funen, Videslet (which at the time was the name for Zealand and the isles of Møn, Falster, and Lolland)27, and Scania, did not yet constitute a kingdom28. Instead these regions, or lands, were subordinate to the king of Swethia. King Ypper of Uppsala in Swethia had three sons named Nori, Østen and Dan. He sent Dan to rule over Videslet29, and Dan built a royal seat at Lejre. Dan had ruled Videslet as “a petty king (rex sedis illius vel regulus)30” for three years when the Jutlanders were attacked by Emperor Augustus31. They called upon Dan to come to their assistance, and Dan arrived with a large host, routing the emperor. The Jutlanders saw that Dan was “a vigorous man, strong and virtuous (strenuum uirum et fortem et uirtuosum)32” so they lifted him upon a stone and named him their king. Dan and the Jutes then subjugated Funen and Scania. At this point, when Dan’s kingdom was coterminous with the Danish kingdom at the time of the writing of the Chronicon Lethrense, Dan took stock of his kingdom, asking his chieftains what it should be called. They responded: “King, live forever! You are King Dan: Your realm shall be called Dania or Dacia; this name will never be obliterated33”. We then learn that Dan and his wife Dannia have a son who is named Ro (fig. 1).
The language of the Chronicon is mostly held in a plain register without rhetorical flourishes. However, in the opening section, the narrative emphasizes the foundational character of the story using easily recognizable biblical language34. The most striking example is that Dan, in the moment of the creation of his kingdom, contemplates his realm “and saw that it was good (Vidit [...] quod esset bona)35” and “that its name will never be obliterated (quod nomen in eternum non delebitur)36”. It may also be worth highlighting that the text presents Zealand with Lejre as the center of the kingdom while recognizing the importance of Jutland: It is the Jutes who raise Dan to the status of regulus to that of a proper king by lifting him upon the stone Danærigh. From the early eleventh century (if not before), Danish kings were inaugurated at the assembly in Viborg37, and this story can thus be seen as a fitting account of origin, projecting current practice back to the moment of foundation and explaining how that came to be38; although the text does not spell this out and Viborg is not that close to the southern border of the kingdom.
Fig. 1: Ypper’s descendants in Chronicon Lethrense.
Realization: Peter Andersen et Jonas Wellendorf ; CC BY NC SA.
The Swedish Een deel aff danske krönike j hedendomen presents the same basic story although the perspective is adjusted to reflect a Swedish outlook. Some names have also been changed, but this should probably be ascribed to the fortuitousness of manuscript transmission rather than deliberate intervention. At the outset, the area that became Denmark is a part of the realm of the Swedish Uppsala king, now named Urbar. He sends his son Dan to rule as “governor (höwitzman)39” of the Danish isles, now called Wetalahedh “because they had always been subordinated to the king of the Götar and Uppsala (för thy the lagho al tiidh för vndher göta oc vpsala konungh)40” and he settles at Lejre41. In the meantime, “the Jutes had yet again absconded from the king of Uppsala and did not want to be subordinate to anyone. (Tha waro jwtar ather gangne fran vpsala konungh oc wille haffwa engen herra öffwer sigh.)42” Emperor Augustus sees this as an opportunity to give the Jutes an ultimatum: they can submit to him of their own free will and pay him tributes, or he will make them. Otherwise, the Swedish text reads like the Danish, although the biblical resonances are less pronounced.
Turning to Saxo, the most conspicuous aspect of his account of Dan is that he does not have a story to tell about him. We neither learn of a foreign origin of the founding figure nor of an epic battle at the southern border. Saxo simply traces the origin of the Danes (or the name of the Danes for he does not distinguish between the two) to the brothers Dan and Angul who were made the leaders of “our people (gentis nostre)43” at an unspecified time in the distant past. The two are obvious eponyms of the Danes and the Angles, but beyond that Saxo has surprisingly little to say about them: They were elected by common consent44 and the genealogical tree of the Danish kings emanated from Dan “in an illustrious order of succession45”. Saxo thus traces the institution of elective hereditary kingship back to the very beginning of Danish history. Although Dan and Angul were chosen as kings “in recognition of their outstanding merits of fortitude (ob egregia fortitudinis merita)46”, no specific deeds or merits are mentioned47. Saxo furthermore states that Dudo is mistaken when he claims that the Danes originated from the Danaans, but he does not present an alternative theory of origin. The implication is that Dan and Angul were “of our people” and, so to speak, had sprung from the soil48. As a final piece of information, we learn that their father was named Humblus and that Dan’s sons by the German lady Grytha were Humblus and Lotherus (fig. 2).
Of Dan’s two sons, Humblus is clearly the righteous one. He is chosen as king by common consent (like his father), but Lotherus usurps the throne and rules tyrannically until the Danes revolt against him. Lotherus is succeeded by his son Skyoldus who is described in favorable terms.
Fig. 2: Humblus’s descendants according to Saxo Grammaticus.
Realization: Peter Andersen et Jonas Wellendorf ; CC BY NC SA.
The founding father Humblus is a shadowy figure, but scholarship has long pointed out that the pairing of Humblus with his grandson Lotherus corresponds to Old Norse Humli and his grandson Hlǫðr, both from Heiðreks saga and the ancient poem Hlǫðskviða which is incorporated in that saga49. It is likely that Saxo received the names from this tradition, and he also draws on materials associated with Hlǫðskviða later on in his work when recounting Frotho’ (Frið-Fróði) III’s conflict with the Huns50. Humblus/Humli’s name may also be connected with that of the figure Humul who is listed in the second place in Jordanes’s genealogy of the Amali51, immediately following the founding figure Gapt, whose name in turn is seen as a corruption of Gaut (ON Gautr), founding father of the Götar (ON Gautar). It is also tempting to associate the name of Lotherus with Lotharius – a name carried by a number of Frankish rulers – as done by Sigurd Kværndrup and Lars Hermannson52. However, the names Lotherus and Lotharius are quite different, even if look similar. Lotharius is dithematic; its basic components are *hlūda- and *harja-. The etymology of Lotherus’s name, on the other hand, is uncertain but any interpretation should account for both ON Hlǫðr and the Old English form Hliþe which is attested in Widsiþ.
While this reconstruction of Humblus’s connection to the Northeast via Gapt and the Götar may be somewhat speculative and relies on combining information from texts 700 years apart, it gains some traction from the fact that texts building on Saxo also sought to link Humblus to the Svear or Götar. One example is provided by Gesta Danorum pa danskæ from ca. 1300 but preserved in later manuscripts53. This text appears to amalgamate Saxo’s Dan with the opening of Chronicon Lethrense and thus ends up with a King Humbli in Uppsala who has four sons: Nori, Østen, Dan and Angul. Humbli commands his son Dan to govern the Danish isles54. The future Danes, it appears, are fiercely independent and “would not yield or pay tribute to anyone, and many therefore waged wars against them but won no victories55.” We then hear about the emperor’s attack on Jutland and Dan’s unification of the kingdom56. Gesta Danorum pa danskæ is thus cumulative and combines, to the extent it is possible, genealogical information from the Chronicon Lethrense and Gesta Danorum. Annales Ryenses (ca. 1300) also supplies the origin story that Saxo lacks by drawing information from Chronicon Lethrense (and the Annales Lundenses) but has a more minimalist approach57.
The Danes entered, as the old historians testify, in the time of Saruch [i.e. Serug], the great-grandfather of Abraham, the realm which is now called Dania or Dacia, coming from Gothia. These Goths, as Papias58 says, are descended from Gog, the son of Japhet. It is plausible that the Danes, as some state, have come from the Danaiti, but it is not wholly certain. They were not named Danes from the begin ning, but every region [land] had its own name, that they still have, until, in the time of David, they had Dan as king; for in that time, Dan, the son of Humblæ, came from Suetia and ruled over Sjælland, Møn, Falster, and Lolland; his realm was called Videslet59.
In this text, Dan’s brothers are gone, and so is his royal Uppsalian origin. Of his father, we only learn that his name was Humblæ, corresponding to Saxo’s Humblus, and that he came from Swethia. The Annales Ryenses continue telling the story of Dan’s unification of the kingdom (as in the Chronicon Lethrense), before it runs through the genealogy of the Danish kings, building, it appears, on Saxo. Although the Annales Ryenses tone down the account of how the Danes broke free of Swedish overlordship, they still trace the founding father to Swethia and the Danes themselves to Gothia.
Saxo’s failure to include an origin story for Dan also seems to have troubled the author of Compendium Saxonis (ca. 1340). Despite being a mostly faithful abbreviation and simplification of Saxo’s text, the unknown redactor cannot help expanding on the figure of Dan and including a story of the unification of the Danish kingdom. For this reason, he adds a section between his abbreviated version of Saxo’s prologue and the events of Saxo’s first book that has no parallel in Saxo’s text, entitled De origine gentis Danorum60. This section is clearly derived from the Annales Ryenses and thus presents the same basic story as the Chronicon Lethrense. The importance of Sweden, however, is further diminished, and the readers only learn that the Danes originally came from Gothia.
While the Danish texts gradually diminish the Swedish component in the origin story of the Danes, the Swedish texts play up this perspective. Een deel aff danske krönike j hedendomen, the Swedish translation of the Chronicon Lethrense has already been quoted. The opening of Lilla rim-krönikan (The short rhymed chronicle, 1450s) goes further. Building on a tradition that can be traced back to the Chronicon Lethrense, it makes the argument that because the future Denmark was populated at the order of the Swedish Gothic king Eric (in the time of Serug as in Annales Ryenses), the Danes are forever bound to pay tax to the Goths:
I [King Eric] was the first king to rule in Gothia. At the time, no one lived in Scania or Wetalaheed [i.e. Videslet]. I was the first who had them settled and discovered. Therefore, they should always pay taxes to the Goths.
This brief account is greatly expanded upon by Johannes Magnus (d. 1544) who goes several steps further in his monumental Historia de omnibus Gothorum Sueonumque regibus (posthumously printed in 155461). In this learned work, Johannes Magnus relies on a wide array of texts and a good deal of imagination to construct a history for the Gothic and Swedish kings. In Johannes Magnus’s text, the sixth king of the Goths, Ericus rules in a golden age62. He institutes just and wholesome laws and does everything that is good for the kingdom. This includes banishing all those who sully Gothia with perverse misdeeds to the area that in time will become Denmark:
A substantial part of them, who had spoiled the golden age that had lasted hitherto by perverse misdeeds, had been ordered by King Erik to seek the neighboring islands lying towards the setting sun (which much later were called the Danish or Cimbrian islands) and to establish new dwellings on them63.
As in Annales Ryenses, the future Denmark is settled in the time of Serug. The sixteenth king of Gothia is Humelus, corresponding to Humblus and Humbli. In his days, the future Danes learn that a great part of the Goths has emigrated to foreign lands under King Berig (as described in Jordanes’s Getica), so believing that the remaining Goths are weakened, they seek to free themselves from the Gothic yoke under which they have lived for centuries:
In his time, when the Danes had noticed that a great host of Goths had previously migrated to foreign lands with their king Beric, and that, as a consequence of their departure, the strength of the Goths who remained in their fatherland had been greatly weakened, they did not hesitate to cast the Gothic rule, which they had obeyed for many centuries, from their necks64.
Now that the future Danes are without Swedish protection, the Saxons (not the Roman emperor) see a golden opportunity to attack Jutland. Johannes Magnus continues:
When the Danes were faced with these difficulties and realized that they would not be able to resist the power of the Saxons, they approached Humelus with supplications, begging for forgiveness for their transgressions, and they were forgiven. Humelus made sure that his two sons, Danus and Angelus, who were born to his noble Swedish wife Gesilda, were put in charge of the Danes. Strengthened by a powerful army, a fierce battle was fought and, by putting the Saxons to flight, they liberated Dania (which then received its name from Dan)65.
Dan thus became the king of the Danes, under the rule of the Gothic king Humelus. Furthermore, Humelus instructed Dan that the Danes would not be allowed to build any sanctuaries in their own kingdom. Instead they should conduct all worship at the temple in Uppsala. He also stated that the Danes, despite their limited territory, should not wage war against any other nations unless they suffered great injustice (p. 65, II.3). For good measure, Johannes Magnus also includes a 10-stanza poem that tells the same basic story. He claims to have translated this poem from the vernacular, and although it bears resemblance to the opening of Lilla rim-krönika it can hardly be considered a literal translation. The final two stanzas read:
But he [Dan] was unable to free the Danes from the tribute due to the Goths, whose great powers he himself feared, as he possessed inferior strength. || This is the sufficiently rightful reason that forces the Danish kings to always pay tribute and bend their necks to the Gothic kings66.
The poem, or song, has had a rich and interesting afterlife and was even translated back into (an approximation of) medieval Swedish in the 19th century by Carl Säve under the title Eriks-Visan (Erik’s song)67. The last stanza reads:
For this reason, the kings of the Danes should consider well, whether it is the duty of the Danes with eternal right and full justification that they have to pay tax to the king of the Goths. –He was also the first to plough the soil of the Danes68.
The story of the founding father of the Danish kings has thus had a rich and varied reception in Sweden, while its afterlife in Denmark has been more contained. The story has evolved significantly since it was recorded in writing by the author of the Chronicon Lethrense, and Saxo’s origin almost ex nihilo, and the emphasis has dramatically shifted. However, one can still trace a genealogy that links these post-medieval Swedish fantasies of Danish subordination to the earlier Danish texts.
Upon Dan’s death, the kingship passes hereditarily to his son Ro (Hrói), who buries his father at Lejre. This establishes a paradigmatic example of a peaceful dynastic transition of power. One can assume that this model is followed by succeeding generations as long as no deviations are mentioned. However, the dynastic line from Dan is soon interrupted, and for periods of time, Denmark is ruled by usurpers who are not of the line of Dan. Consequently, the Danish monarchs can be divided into groups in the Chronicon Lethrense depending on whether or not they are descendants of Dan, and thus of royal blood and rightful heirs to the throne. One figure, Fritleff (Friðleifr), occupies an intermediate position as he marries into the dynasty and through his son brings the line back on track. In Saxo’s text, the kings of Denmark vary in quality and moral standing. Some are virtuous, while others are dominated by vices. Saxo also makes sure to inform his readers of which category each king belongs to. In the Chronicon Lethrense, however, Danish kings are generally portrayed as good, while kings instituted by the Swedes are depicted as bad (tab. 1).
A few figures on this list requires additional comment: Firstly, the Chronicon Lethrense does not mention that Haraldr hilditǫnn (14) is of Dan’s line, but given that the text does not mention any events or complications in connection with his ascensions to the throne, one ca assume that he is understood as a rightful possessor. Secondly, the Swedish version of the chronicle, Een deel aff danske krönike j hedendomen, gives different names for two of the figures: Aki (8) is called Äbbe and Friðleifr (9) is called Fridlem. Finally, the Chronicon Lethrense mentions in passing that Sigurðr (3a) is a son of Haldan, but it is only the Swedish translation Een deel aff danske krönike j hedendomen that mentions that he ruled Denmark as king:
Haldan had a son who was called Sigurðr hvíti. He buried his father at Lejre […] Later when king Sigurðr was killed and did not leave a son, the Swedish king Attilia took tribute from the Danes69.
It is natural to assume that this king has fallen out of the line through some accident of textual transmission.
In the context of the Chronicon’s preoccupation with Sweden, the rulers Rakka (4), Snjó (5) and Heiðr (15) are particularly interesting as they all rule as vassals of the Swedish king. After the death of Halfdan (3), the Swedish king Athisl (Aðils) makes the Danes tributary to himself and appoints a “barking dog (catulum quendam latrabilem)70” by the name of Rakka71 as the king of the Danes72. Rakka is killed when it seeks to intervene in a dog-fight. The translation in Een deel aff danske krönike j hedendomen faithfully renders the story into Swedish73. Saxo Grammaticus has a similar story, but in his work the dog-king is appointed by the Swedish warrior Gunnarus (Gunnarr) to rule over Norway. Saxo also spells out that the intention is to humiliate the arrogant Norwegians by forcing them to bow down before a “barking (latranti)74” animal75.
After Rakka’s death, King Athils (Aðils) appoints Snyo (Snjó), the shepherd of the giant Læ (Hlér) of Læsø, as the king of Denmark and commands him to be a harsh king:
Go to Denmark, Snjó, and be a hard and abominably raging king instituting many iniquitous and unjust laws, so that the Danes will remember your reign through the ages!
Tab. 1: The kings of Denmark according to the Chronicon Lethrense
| Of Dan’s line | Married into Dan’s line | Not of Dan’s line | |
| 1 | Dan | ||
| 2 | Ro | ||
| 3 | Haldan | ||
| 3A | Siwardus Albus | ||
| 4 | Rakka, a dog | ||
| 5 | Snyo, sheperd of the giant Læ | ||
| 6 | Rolf Kraki, son of Helgi, Haldan’s brother | ||
| 7 | Hiarwardus, count of Scaria of German descent, marries Sculda, kills Rolf | ||
| 8 | Aki, brother of Haghbardus, son of Hamundus, kills Hiarwardus | ||
| 9 | Fritleff, comes from the North, marries Rolf’s daughter | ||
| 10 | Frotho Largus, son of Fritleff and Rolf’s daughter, killed by sons of Swærthingus | ||
| 11 | Ingyald | ||
| 12 | Olauus | ||
| 13 | Asa | ||
| 14 | Haraldus Hyldetan | ||
| 15 | Hethæ |
The iniquity of Snjó’s reign is described with great rhetorical flourishes as is his terrible death by phthiriasis (lice emanating from his orifices and biting him to death). A death that since antiquity has often been seen as divine punishment for excessive tyranny76.
Saxo has a very different story to tell about King Snio (Snjó)77. Snio succeeds his father on the Danish throne and the kingdom initially prospers under him. He brings Scania, which had defected, back into the Danish fold, conquers Gothia, and fights Suethia with some success, even convincing the Swedish queen to elope with him. However, soon the harvests fail due to inclement weather and a large part of the Danish population is forced to go abroad. Saxo links this to the account of the origin of the Lombards as related by Paul the Deacon. As a result, there are fewer hands to work the fields. As they fall into disuse, they eventually turn into woodlands. Saxo does not have anything to say about Snjó’s demise, but he is succeeded by his son Biorn (Bjǫrn)78.
Points of similarity between Saxo’s account and that of the Chronicon Lethrense are few beyond the name of the king. It can be noted that unjust laws are mentioned in both texts: The Chronicon Lethrense is not specific, while Saxo emphasizes the king’s (apparently misguided) effort to curb the famine by prohibiting the brewing of alcohol from grains. This in turn leads to some discussion of Snjó’s future death, but in a manner very different from that of the Chronicon Lethrense.
After Snjó’s death, the royal power passes back to Dan’s line, for Hrólfr kraki, nephew of King Halfdan, has now reached maturity. In the Latin version, it is the Danes who choose Hrólfr as king, while in the Swedish version in Een deel aff danske krönike j hedendomen, it is the Swedish king who makes Hrólfr king of the Danes79.
The final two characters in the Chronicle that have a Swedish connection are Sculd (Skuld) and Hethæ (Heiðr). The first is the daughter of the Swedish king and Ursula (Yrsa), Hrólfr kraki’s mother and sister. Skuld convinces her husband Hjǫrvarðr to kill Hrólfr kraki. The second character, Heiðr, fought alongside King Haraldr huldetǫnn in the battle of Brávǫll in which the Danes lost and the king fell. After the battle, the Swedish King Hringr allows the Danes to take Heiðr as their king. She also gave name to Hethæby. The Swedish translation seems to imply that Heiðr fought on the Swedish side, and after the battle, the Swedish king, Haquon Ringe (Hákon hringr) gives her Denmark. The Chronicon Lethrense ends at this point, where the Danes are back where they started, under the overlordship of the Swedish king.
The history of the Danish dynasty presented in Chronicon Lethrense and its Swedish translation Een deel aff danske krönike j hedendomen differs dramatically from the legends of the Skjǫldungs/Scyldings found in other works detailing Danish legendary history (such as Saxo, Beowulf, and the Icelandic materials). Whereas other texts depict a house divided against itself and embroiled in conflicts of dynastic succession, the Chronicon Lethrense focuses on the struggles of a single united dynasty against their Swedish rivals and other usurpers. The core ideology of the text is straightforward: Dan and his descendants are the rightful rulers of Denmark. While many Danish texts of the 12th and 13th centuries are characterized by an anti-German sentiment, the Chronicon Lethrense should not be counted among them; the Germans are virtually absent from the chronicle, which looks to the east and is first and foremost concerned with the Swedes. Due to its eastern perspective, the text sparked considerable interest in Sweden in the late Middle Ages. This resulted in a vernacular Swedish translation or adaptation of the text that adjusted the ideology of the original Latin text to align with Swedish interests.
