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Chap. V.
TRADITION OF QUEEN GUNHILD.
65
On my arrival later at Copenhagen one of my first
inquiries at the Museum of Northern Antiquities was
after the clothes of the murdered Queen, which, together
with her hair, are there preserved. She seems to have
been attired in a leather surcoat of calfs^jn, sewn
together with sinews, of excellent workmanship : indeed,
the saddlers and shoemakers of the present day declare
they could not have made it better. There also are the
wooden hooks by which she was pegged down, to allay
all fear of her again rising to torment her murderer.
The left shoe was removed too—a very necessary
precaution. Her hair is of a light-brown colour, answering
to the French “ blond doré,” fine, and free from gray;
and there are some remains of the woollen shirt in which
the corpse was enveloped, on which, curious to relate,
though discoloured by some 800 years’ immersion in a
morass, the square pattern of a shepherd’s plaid tartan is
still visible. There can be no mistake about the matter;
though the original colours are, and will always be, a
myth, it proves the antiquity of the tartan, and if, as
historians assert, Gunhild did come over from the
Orkneys, why, in all probability, she brought her shirt
with her.
This body was discovered in 1835, in the vicinity of
the manor of Haraldskjaer, near Veile, three feet deep
in the mose or bog. A distinguished professor, Petersen
by name, pronounced it to be that of Gunhild, though
now the learned world no longer credit the assertion.
I may add, without entering into this vexed question,
that since that date many more bodies of “ bogged
ladies ” have been withdrawn from the swamps in various
parts of Denmark, which has caused the disbelief of
Professor Petersen’s theory. In an adjoining drawer to
VOL. I. F
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