The Gesta Danorum and its Danish counterpart tell that the Danish king Rorik Slengeborre put Horwendill and Feng as his rulers in Jutland, and gave his daughter to Horwendill as a reward for his good services. Horwendill and the daughter had the son Amblothe (Hamlet). The jealous Feng killed Horwendill and took his wife. Amblothe understood that his life was in danger and tried to survive by faking insanity. Feng sent Amblothe to the king of Britain with two servants carrying a message that the British king should kill Amblothe. While the servants slept, Amblothe carved off the (probably runic) message and wrote that the servants should be killed and himself married to the king's daughter. The British king did what the message said. Exactly one year later, Feng drank to Amblothe's memory, but Amblothe appeared and killed him.
According to Saxo, Feng and Horwendill were the sons of Jutland's ruler Gervendill, and succeeded him as the rulers of Jutland. Rørik Slyngebond, king of Denmark, gave his daughter to Horwendill; the couple then had a son, Amleth. But Feng, out of jealousy, murdered Horwendill, and persuaded Gerutha to become his wife, on the plea that he had committed the crime for no other reason than to avenge her of a husband by whom she had been hated. Amleth, afraid of sharing his father's fate, pretended to be imbecile, but the suspicion of Feng put him to various tests which are related in detail. Among other things they sought to entangle him with a young girl, his foster-sister, but his cunning saved him. When, however, Amleth slew the eavesdropper hidden, like Polonius, in his mother's room, and destroyed all trace of the deed, Feng was assured that the young man's madness was feigned. Accordingly, he dispatched him to England in company with two attendants, who bore a letter enjoining the king of the country to put him to death. Amleth surmised the purport of their instructions, and secretly altered the message on their wooden tablets to the effect that the king should put the attendants to death and give Amleth his daughter in marriage.
After marrying the princess Amleth returned at the end of a year to Denmark. Of the wealth he had accumulated he took with him only certain hollow sticks filled with gold. He arrived in time for a funeral feast, held to celebrate his supposed death. During the feast he plied the courtiers with wine, and executed his vengeance during their drunken sleep by fastening down over them the woolen hangings of the hall with pegs he had sharpened during his feigned madness, and then setting fire to the palace. He then killed Feng with his own sword.
As can be seen, many plot elements of Shakespeare's Hamlet are present in this account. However, they are placed in Jutland - the diametrical opposite side of Denmark from Elsinore, which had become identified with Hamlet due to the Shakespearean account.
Gesta Danorum is a patriotic work of Danish history, by the 12th-century author Saxo Grammaticus. It is the most ambitious literary undertaking of medieval Denmark and is an essential source for the nation's early history. It is also one of the oldest known written documents about the history of Estonia and Latvia.
Saxo Grammaticus, also known as Saxo cognomine Longus, was a Danish historian, theologian and author. He is thought to have been a clerk or secretary to Absalon, Archbishop of Lund, the main advisor to Valdemar I of Denmark. He is the author of the Gesta Danorum, the first full history of Denmark, from which the legend of Amleth would come to inspire the story of Hamlet by Shakespeare.
Hrólfr Kraki, Hroðulf, Rolfo, Roluo, Rolf Krage was a semi-legendary Danish king who appears in both Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian tradition.
Fróði is the name of a number of legendary Danish kings in various texts including Beowulf, Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda and his Ynglinga saga, Saxo Grammaticus' Gesta Danorum, and the Grottasǫngr. A Danish king by this name also appears as a minor character in the Middle High German epic Rabenschlacht. The name is possibly an eponym for the god Freyr.
Amleth is a figure in a medieval Scandinavian legend, the direct inspiration of the character of Prince Hamlet, the hero of William Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. The chief authority for the legend of Amleth is Saxo Grammaticus, who devotes to it parts of the third and fourth books of his Gesta Danorum, completed at the beginning of the 13th century. Saxo's version is supplemented by Latin and vernacular compilations from a much later date. In all versions, prince Amleth (Amblothæ) is the son of Horvendill (Orwendel), king of the Jutes. It has often been assumed that the story is ultimately derived from an Old Icelandic poem, but no such poem has been found; the extant Icelandic versions, known as the Ambales-saga, or Amloda-saga are considerably later than Saxo.
Sigurd Ring according to legend was a king of the Swedes, being mentioned in many old Scandinavian sagas. According to these sources he was granted rulership over Sweden as a vassal king under his uncle Harald Wartooth. Later he would take up arms against his uncle Harald in a bid to overthrow him and take the crown of Denmark, a conflict which Sigurd eventually won after the legendary Battle of the Brávellir, where it is said that Odin himself intervened and killed Harald. In the Sagas, Sigurd is also known for being the father of the Norse Viking hero and legendary king of Denmark and Sweden, Ragnar Lodbrok. According to Bósa saga ok Herrauds, there was once a saga on Sigurd Ring, but this saga is now lost.
Harald Wartooth or Harold Hiltertooth was a semi-legendary king of Denmark who is mentioned in several traditional sources. He is held to have (indirectly) succeeded his father as king of Zealand and to have expanded his realm. According to different sources, he may have ruled over Jutland, part of Sweden and the historical northern German province of Wendland. He is said to have been finally defeated and killed at the legendary Battle of Bråvalla.
Heoroweard is a character who appears in Beowulf and also in Norse legends, where he is named Hjörvarðr or Hiartuar. If he existed in real life, his name would have been Proto-Norse *Heruwarduz.
Skuld was a princess of Scandinavian legend who married Heoroweard and encouraged him to kill Hroðulf in Hrólfs saga kraka. The accounts of her vary greatly from source to source. Skuld is derived from the Old Norse verb skulla, "need/ought to be/shall be"; its meaning is "that which should become, or that needs to occur". Other similarly named characters appear in the Skjöldunga saga and the Gesta Danorum, as well as the Chronicon Lethrense.
Bjarkamál is an Old Norse poem from around the year 1000. Only a few lines have survived in the Old Norse version, the rest is known from Saxo's version in Latin. The latter consists of 298 hexameters, and tells the tale of Rolf Krake's downfall at Lejre on the isle of Sjælland, described in a dialogue between two of Rolf Krake's twelve berserkers, Bodvar Bjarke, the most famous warrior at the court of the legendary Danish king Rolf Krake, and Hjalte. The poem opens with Hjalte waking up his fellow berserkers, having realized they are under attack. In 1030, King Olav had the bard Tormod Kolbrunarskald recite the Bjarkamál to rouse his outnumbered army in the morning before the start of the Battle of Stiklestad, according to Fóstbrœðra saga.
The Angles were a dominant Germanic tribe in the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, and gave their name to the English, England and to the region of East Anglia. Originally from Angeln, present-day Schleswig-Holstein, a legendary list of their kings has been preserved in the heroic poems Widsith and Beowulf, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
The dog king is a Scandinavian tradition which appears in several Scandinavian sources: Chronicon Lethrense, Annals of Lund, Gesta Danorum, Heimskringla, Hversu Noregr byggðist and probably also in Skáldatal.
Hreðric and Hroðmund were the sons of the Danish king Hroðgar and his queen, Wealhþeow, in the Old English epic Beowulf. They are only mentioned in passing, and there seems to be some foreshadowing in Beowulf that their cousin, Halga's son Hroðulf, i.e. Hrólfr Kraki, would usurp the throne from them.
Hrœrekr Ringslinger or Ringscatterer was a legendary 7th-century king of Zealand or Denmark, who appears in Chronicon Lethrense, Annals of Lund, Gesta Danorum, Sögubrot, Njáls saga, Hversu Noregr byggðist, Skjöldunga saga, and Bjarkarímur. Connection with such historical figures such as Horik I, who ruled Denmark around 854 for a dozen or so years, or the founder of the Rurik dynasty is fraught with difficulty.
Wihtlæg, Whitlæg, Wighlek, Wiglecus, Wiglek, Witlac or Viglek is a legendary king of either Denmark or Angeln in Germanic legends. He is known in Saxo's kings of Denmark by the name of Vigletus.
The sources of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, a tragedy by William Shakespeare believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601, trace back as far as pre-13th century. The generic "hero-as-fool" story is so old and is expressed in the literature of so many cultures that scholars have hypothesized that it may be Indo-European in origin. A Scandinavian version of the story of Hamlet was put into writing around 1200 AD by Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus in his work Gesta Danorum. It is this work Shakespeare borrowed from to create Hamlet. Similar accounts are found in the Icelandic Saga of Hrolf Kraki and the Roman legend of Lucius Junius Brutus, both of which feature heroes who pretend to be insane in order to get revenge. A reasonably accurate version of Saxo's story was translated into French in 1570 by François de Belleforest in his Histoires Tragiques. Belleforest embellished Saxo's text substantially, almost doubling its length, and introduced the hero's melancholy.
Lagertha, according to legend, was a Viking ruler and shield-maiden from what is now Norway, and the onetime wife of the famous Viking Ragnar Lodbrok. Her tale was recorded by the chronicler Saxo in the 12th century. According to the historian Judith Jesch, Saxo's tales about warrior women are largely fictional; other historians wrote that they may have a basis in tales about the Norse deity Thorgerd.
Angul is a figure in Nordic mythology who, according to the Gesta Danorum was the ancestor of the Danes, along with his brother Dan. He was also the ancestor of the Angles in Denmark, who later migrated to Great Britain, naming the land they settled England.
There are two sites in Denmark presented as Hamlet's Grave, the burial site of Amleth, the Jutish chieftain of historical legend on whom Hamlet, the hero of Shakespeare's tragedy was based; one is in the grounds of Marienlyst Castle in Helsingør, the other is a Bronze Age tumulus in Ammelhede, Randers Municipality, Jutland.
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