What happened
Valdemar IV Atterdag, the king who reunited Denmark, died in 1375 at his favorite castle, Gurre, in North Zealand. Legend made him the leader of the Wild Hunt. It was said that the king loved Gurre so much – and his beloved Tove, who according to tradition was killed on the orders of the jealous queen – that he declared God could keep His heaven so long as he could keep Gurre. For those words he must hunt without end after death. On dark nights villagers heard the thunder of hooves, baying hounds and the blowing of horns; anyone who stood in the hunt's way could be carried off or trampled. The story became one of Denmark's national myths: Jens Peter Jacobsen turned it into the poem cycle “Songs of Gurre,” which Arnold Schoenberg set as the monumental “Gurre-Lieder” (premiered in Vienna in 1913).
Witnesses
Folk tradition of Zealand, recorded by 19th-century collectors of Danish folklore; no specific witnesses.
Explanations and hypotheses
Valdemar Atterdag and his castle are historical, and the ruins of Gurre can be visited by the lake Gurre Sø. The romance with Tove, however, is not confirmed by contemporary sources, and the Wild Hunt is a wandering motif of European folklore – in Germany it is led by Wodan or Hackelberg, in England by Herne or Herla. Folklorists see the Danish version as an old motif attached to a ruler remembered as hard and ruthless. The 19th-century Romantics turned it into a story of love stronger than death.
Legend A story handed down through generations – it can be neither confirmed nor disproved.
Sources
- Lex.dk (Den Store Danske) – Gurre
- VisitDenmark – Gurre Castle Ruin
- J. P. Jacobsen, Gurresange (Tekstnet)
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