Dan (king)

Dan (or Halfdan) is the name of one or more of the legendary earliest kings of the Danes and Denmark, as mentioned in medieval Scandinavian texts.

Dan apparently first ruled in Zealand, as the Chronicle states that it was when he saved his people from an attack by Emperor Augustus that the Jutes and the men of Fyn and Scania also accepted him as king.

The Eddic poem Rígsthula[1] tells how the god Ríg (said to be Heimdall) fathered a mortal son named Jarl.

Jarl had twelve sons with Erna Herse's daughter, the youngest of whom was named Kon the Young (Old Norse Konr Ungr).

One day, while hunting and snaring birds in the forest, a crow spoke to him and suggested that he would gain more by going after men, praising the wealth of "Dan and Danp."

According to Arngrímur Jónsson's Latin epitome of the lost Skjöldungasaga, made in 1597: Ríg (Rigus) was a man not the least among the great ones of his time.

This Dan married Olof, the daughter of Wermund, and thus became brother-in-law to Offa of Angel, mentioned in the Old English poem Beowulf.

But the burning of the dead continued, long after that time, to be the custom of the Swedes and Northmen.In his Brevis historia regum Dacie, the 12th-century historian Sven Aagesen mentions Danu Elatus, 'the Proud,' presumably Dan Mikilláti, and makes him the successor to Uffi, that is, Offa, son of Wermund, thus agreeing with the Skjöldungasaga.

Saxo begins his history with two brothers named Dan and Angul, sons of one Humbli, who were made rulers by the consent of the people because of their bravery.

However, Saxo mentions him only briefly, describing him as a warlike king who scorned his subjects and squandered his wealth, having greatly degenerated from his ancestors.

Name spellings are derived from Oliver Elton's 1905 translation, The First Nine Books of the Danish History of Saxo Grammaticus, via Wikisource.