Danmǫrk (Denmark)

Denmark is the old heart of the Northern viking world — the kingdom of the legendary Skjöldung kings, of Hrólf Kraki's hall at Lejre, and of the great Ragnar Lodbrok and his sons. Richer, more settled, and closer to the Frankish and English worlds than Norway, it is the power against which the Norwegian kings forever measure themselves: Canute the Great reaches out of Denmark to buy Norway's chiefs and drive St Olaf into exile; the Norwegian Magnus the Good wins the Danish crown; Harald Hardrada wars over it for years. In Saxo's Latin history Denmark is the stage for the oldest legends of all — Amleth, Hadding, Balder and Hother. It is the corpus's southern pole, the kingdom of serpents and snake-pits and famous kings, against whose long shadow much of the Norwegian and legendary material plays out.