"'Erected by Frederik VII,'" read Valdemar aloud, deciphering the inscription on the base of the brick tower.
Karen and Karl came running up, their arms full of mountain wild-flowers they had found almost hidden among the deep heather.
"Valdemar, are you going to tell us all about the Danish kings now?" urged Karl, who was a good student of United States history, and loved hero-tales of any country. "Please start at the very beginning. Karen wants to hear, too."
"And, after the story is finished, perhaps we shall have time for a little row on the lake," added Fru Ingemann.
Quickly they ranged themselves comfortably on the grass in the shade of one of Himmelbjaerg's giant old beeches, whose long arms swept the ground about them.
"Denmark means 'land of dark woods,'" began Valdemar, who loved his beautiful country, and was familiar with her legends and history from his babyhood up. "The Northmen were a fire-worshipping heathen people, according to Snorre Sturlason, who says that Odin, their chief god, was a real personage, who used to appear to men. But all this early history of Denmark is so full of legend, petty fights of kings, piratical exploits, and strange, wild stories and romances of the Skalds, that it is very hard to tell which is fact or fable, until we come to the last thousand years of Danish history.
"But in those early mythological days, when Denmark was covered with dark forests of mighty firs, Dan the Famous was one of the earliest kings, reigning in 1038 B. C. He became powerful, after uniting many small chieftains to himself, and so, according to some authorities, the country was called 'Danmark,' or the border of the 'Dans,' or Danes.
"Gorm the Old, in the middle of the ninth century, was really the first king to rule over the whole of Denmark, and his was called the Golden Age. His beautiful young wife, Queen Thyra Dannebod (the Dane's Joy), was full of goodness and wisdom, and after Gorm's death, she built the famous Dannewirke, a great wall that stretched across Denmark from the North Sea to the Baltic, for her people's protection against the fearful inroads and plunderings of their southern neighbors. One may see the graves near Jellinge, to-day, of Gorm the Old and Queen Thyra, two heather-covered, flat-topped cairns marked by massive old Runic stones.