It was a stricken Denmark to which he came back.  Three claimants were fighting for the crown.  The land was laid waste by sea-rovers, who saw their chance to raid defenceless homes while the men able to bear arms were following the rival kings.  The people had lost hope.  Just when Absalon returned, peace was made between the claimants.  Knud, Svend, and Valdemar, his foster brother of old, divided up the country between them.  They swore a dear oath to keep the pact, but for all that “the three kingdoms did not last three days.”  The treacherous Svend waited only for a chance to murder both his rivals, and it came quickly, when he and Valdemar were the guests of Knud at Roskilde.  They had eaten and drunk together and were gathered in the “Storstue,” the big room of the house, when Knud saw Svend whispering aside with his men.  With a sudden foreboding of evil, he threw his arms about Valdemar’s shoulders and kissed him.  The young King, who was playing chess with one of his men, looked up in surprise and asked what it meant.  Just then Svend left the hall, and his henchmen fell upon the two with drawn swords.  Knud was cut down at once, his head cleft in twain.  Valdemar upset the table with the candles and, wrapping his cloak about his arm to ward off the blows that showered upon him, knocked his assailants right and left and escaped, badly wounded.

Absalon came into the room as Knud fell and, thinking it was Valdemar, caught him in his arms and took his wounded head in his lap.  Sitting there in utter sorrow and despair, heedless of the tumult that raged in the darkness around him, he felt the King’s garment and knew that the man who was breathing his last in his arms was not his friend.  He laid the lifeless body down gently and left the hall.  The murderers barred his way, but he brushed their swords and spears aside and strode forth unharmed.  Valdemar had found a horse and made for Fjenneslev, twenty miles away, with all speed, and there Absalon met him and his brother Esbern in the morning.

King Svend sought him high and low to finish his dastardly work, while on Thing he wailed loudly before the people that Valdemar and Knud had tried to kill him, showing in proof of it his cloak, which he had rent with his own sword.  But Valdemar’s friends were wide awake.  Esbern flew through the island on his fleet horse in Valdemar’s clothes, leading his pursuers a merry dance, and when the young King’s wound was healed, he found him a boat and ferried him across to the mainland, where the people flocked to his standard.  When Svend would have followed, it was the Lady Inge who scuttled his ship by night and gave her foster son the start he needed.  There followed a short and sharp struggle that ended on Grathe Heath with the utter rout of Svend’s forces.  He himself was killed, and Valdemar at last was King of all Denmark.