There also is a braid of Queen
Bengerd's hair that was found when her grave was opened in 1855. The
people's hate had followed her even there, and would not let her
rest. The slab that covered her tomb had been pried off, and a round
stone dropped into the place made for her head. Otherwise her grave
was undisturbed.
"Truly then fell the crown from the heads of Danish men," says the
old chronicle of King Valdemar's death, and black clouds were
gathering ominously even then over the land. But in storm and
stress, as in days that were fair, the Danish people have clung
loyally to the memory of their beloved King and of his sweet Dagmar.
HOW THE GHOST OF THE HEATH WAS LAID
On the map of Europe the mainland of Denmark looks like a beckoning
finger pointing due north and ending in a narrow sand-reef, upon
which the waves of the North Sea and of the Kattegat break with
unceasing clamor and strife. The heart of the peninsula, quite
one-fourth of its area, was fifty years ago a desert, a barren,
melancholy waste, where the only sign of life encountered by the
hunter, gunning for heath-fowl and plover, was a rare shepherd
tending a few lonesome sheep, and knitting mechanically on his
endless stocking. The two, the lean sheep and the long stocking,
together comprised the only industries which the heath afforded and
was thought capable of sustaining.
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