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Chap. V.
JELLINGE.
69
JELLINGE.
A hot drive of two hours, under a burning sun,
brought us to the village of Jellinge, where,
according to the Sagas, in ancient days, King Gorm the
Old held his court, and his quéen, Thyre Danebod,
once possessed a castle. Do not, however, imagine by
castle I mean a building of stone turrets and
machicolations : in those early times a circular vallum of earth,
such as in England we still term “ a Danish camp,” in
the interior of which a timber edifice was raised, formed
the residence of Jutland royalty. The history of Gorm
“ the Old,” * for he is said to have lived upwards
of a hundred years, is so mixed up with tradition and
romance as to become almost unintelligible: sufficient
then it is to say he flourished about the year 900,
invaded England like the rest of the Danes, and, after
a battle in which he was defeated by King Alfred, was
baptized in the village church of Aller, in the Isle of
Athelney, under the name of Athelstan, an appellation
which he never adopted. He it was, too, who, after
subduing the numerous smaa or syssel Konge (petty kings)
of the land, first united the various provinces of Jutland
under one sceptre. Thyre, his queen, one of the favourite
heroines of early Scandinavian story, was, according to
Saxo Grammaticus and many of the early Sagas, a
daughter of Ethelred, King of England; but some
years after, when England was in bad odour in Denmark,
people discovered her to be daughter of a petty King
of Holstein (Anglia). Certain it is she stood out at
the time of her marriage, and that stoutly, for. that
* The Guthrum of English history, 840-940.
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