We know extremely little about Bernard the Dane and all that we do know comes from Dudo of Saint-Quentin in his work commonly referred to as 'De moribus', the story of the lives of the earliest leaders of Normandy.
[4] [note 3] Dudo recounts that, after the murder of his father, the young heir, Richard, is abducted by allies of the king (Louis IV) and taken to the royal stronghold of Laon under the guise of protecting and educating him.
Negotiations follow, with Bernard playing a central role, which culminate in the release of the king in return for a renewed treaty re-asserting the Normans' right to their territory and Richard's right to its leadership.
There is no extant contemporary source for Bernard the Dane,[note 4] despite there being two writers who were both maintaining chronicles at the time: Flodoard and Richer, both of Reims.
[8] He would have been a young man when the treaty establishing Normandy was signed and in the midst of writing his chronicles when William was killed in 942 CE.
He describes this shocking event, and those that followed it, but fails to mention Bernard the Dane either in this context or at any point in his forty year chronicle.
"[10] Graham Loud has described it as "a piece of extremely learned, not to say remarkably pretentious, literary fiction" and adds that most of what Dudo wrote was "either his own invention or the product of skilful plagiarisation or reworking of other events.