Although Mönnichhofen's expedition through Stordalen, and the Scottish invasion of Romsdalen and Gudbrandsdalen which formed an integral but unsuccessful part of that expedition, took place in 1612, no account of the latter appeared in print earlier than the year 1688, when Puffendorff wrote his "Introduction to Swedish History;" and it was only three years later that Widikindi, another Swedish historian, gave a narrative of it in a History of Gustavus Adolphus.
Among Danish historians, Niels Slange was the first of any eminence to reproduce the now palpable errors of Puffendorff and Widikindi, in a History of Christian IV., written in 1732.
In 1782, the subject of the Skottetog first became popularized in Norway by the publication, in a periodical journal called the Dansk Museum, of the spirit-stirring poem by Edvard Storm, which Norwegian children still learn by heart and in song, and which has even been well circulated in the English and German languages.[3]
THE LANDING OF THE SCOTS IN ROMSDALEN, 1612.
[Page 11]. As depicted by the Norwegian artists Tiedemann and Gude.
But the first really important contribution towards the history of the event was made in 1838, when Dean Krag of Vaage dedicated to the descendants of the Bönder[4] who had fought at Kringelen the Sagas, or traditions, he had personally collected in Gudbrandsdalen, annotated with such historical references as were then available.[5]
While the traditions he has so scrupulously preserved for us are of great interest, if only because they indicate plainly the source of the information on which Swedish, Danish, and even Scottish accounts of the expedition into Romsdalen had been chiefly based, he enriched history with copies of the first and only documents that had apparently ever been drawn before his time, from State or other archives, relative to the Scots who landed in Romsdalen. Those documents were: a Report by the Norwegian Stadtholder, Envold Kruse, to the Danish Chancellor, dated Aggershuus, 17th September 1612; and three deeds of gift of land (all dated 3rd September 1613) to Lars Hage, Peder Randklev, and Berdon Sejelstad, for their bravery and loyal devotion on that occasion.
In that laborious little work Dean Krag pointed out that, with the exception of Kruse's first Report (of which he had obtained a copy from Copenhagen), all the writers after Puffendorff (1688) and Widikindi (1691) had repeated, more or less, only what those two historians had related. He also showed that Storm's poem had been preceded by a popular ballad on the same subject, and of which he collected and printed as much as was still extant in Gudbrandsdalen.
More recent historical research resulted in the discovery, also at Copenhagen, of a second Report from Envold Kruse, the Stadtholder, dated 3rd October 1612. It was first published between 1858 and 1860,[6] and was reproduced in a little work printed at Molde in 1877.[7]
The history of the Scottish expedition to Norway in 1612 has, therefore, until this day been supported in Scandinavian accounts by only two documents of indisputable authority—namely, the two Reports of Envold Kruse, of which the second was brought to light less than twenty years ago.