Holger the Dane

About the legend

Being

Holger Danske (Sleeping Hero / National Guardian)

Cultural meaning

Holger the Dane is Denmark's sleeping hero. Many countries have one: in Britain, King Arthur is said to be only sleeping, and in Germany the emperor Frederick Barbarossa sits beneath the Kyffhäuser hills with his beard grown through a stone table. Such heroes rest in hiding until their country truly needs them. For Danes, Holger stands for the belief that the country's courage cannot be destroyed, only lie sleeping, and as long as he sleeps, Denmark is safe.

Fun fact

You can visit Holger! In the old cellars beneath Kronborg Castle in Helsingør sits a big stone statue of the sleeping Holger, with his sword across his knees and his long beard spilling over the table.

Cultural notes

The legend of Holger Danske (Holger the Dane) is one of Denmark's best-known national legends. It began in the medieval French chansons de geste, heroic poems in which Ogier le Danois is one of Charlemagne's knights. In 1534 Christiern Pedersen published a Danish version of the French romance, Olger Danskes Krønike, in which Ogier is the son of the Danish king Godfred (Gøtrik), and over the centuries the Danes turned him into a symbol of the country itself. Tradition holds that he sleeps beneath Kronborg Castle in Helsingør, which for centuries collected the Øresund toll from ships passing through the strait, and which Shakespeare used as the setting for Hamlet. Thomas Keightley recorded in 1834 that the clang of arms was often heard under the castle. H.C. Andersen's story "Holger Danske" (1845) gave the legend its best-known form: the ships greet Kronborg with their cannons, the sea sometimes freezes all the way to Sweden, Holger's beard has grown through the marble table, he sees all of Denmark in his dreams, and every Christmas Eve an angel tells him that no real danger threatens the country. Andersen frames the legend with an old woodcarver who tells it to his grandson while carving a figurehead of Holger for a ship. During the Second World War, a Danish resistance group took the name Holger Danske. The statue in the casemates of Kronborg is by the sculptor H.P. Pedersen-Dan: the plaster original from 1907 was replaced by a concrete copy in 1985.

About this retelling

National legend with literary origins The Danish national legend of the sleeping hero beneath Kronborg Castle, retold for children.

Holger Danske began as Ogier le Danois in medieval French poems and became Denmark's own sleeping hero over the centuries. The sleeper beneath Kronborg, the beard grown into the table, the dreams and the angel who comes every Christmas Eve come from the Danish tradition and from H.C. Andersen. The rest belongs to this story: Holger's years with the emperor are told as long journeys where he helps others, never as war, because the heart of the legend is his love of home, not fighting. The emperor's offer, the journey home, the people he helps on the way and the promise at the stone table were written for Nordic Tales. In the legend he will wake and fight if Denmark is in danger; here he only promises to be there if Denmark ever truly needs him.

Sources

• Holger Danske (from Nye Eventyr, 1845) — Hans Christian Andersen
• Tales and Popular Fictions (1834), pp. 279–287 — Thomas Keightley
• Wikipedia: Ogier the Dane
• Olger Danskes Krønike (1534) — Christiern Pedersen (ed. Nis Hanssen, 1842)

Themes

• patience
• hope
• loyalty
• hidden strength
• Holger Danske
• Kronborg
• Helsingør
• sleeping hero
• Denmark
• Charlemagne
• knight
• legend
• medieval
• castle
• guardian
• national identity

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