He was met by King Valdemar’s kinsman and friend, Albert of Orlamunde, who hastened to the frontier with all the men he could gather.  They halted him with a treaty of peace that offered to set Valdemar free if he would take his kingdom as a fief of the German crown.  He, Albert, so it was written, was to keep all his lands and more, would he but sign it.  He did not stop to hear the rest, but slashed the parchment into ribbons with his sword, and ordered an instant advance.  The bishop he made short work of, and he was heard of no more.  But in the battle with the German princes Albert was defeated and taken prisoner.  The door of King Valdemar’s dungeon was opened only to let his friend in.

After two years and a half in chains, Valdemar was ransomed by his people with a great sum of gold.  The Danish women gave their rings and their jewels to bring back their king.  They flocked about him when he returned, and received him like the conqueror of old; but he rode among them gray and stern, and his thoughts were far away.

They had made him swear on oath upon the sacrament, and all Denmark’s bishops with him, before they set him free, that he would not seek revenge.  But once he was back in his own, he sent to Pope Gregory, asking him to loose him from an oath wrung from him while he was helpless in the power of bandits.  And the Pope responded that to keep faith with traitors was no man’s duty.  Then back he rode over the River Eider into the enemy’s land—­for they had stripped Denmark of all her hard-won possessions south of the ancient border of the kingdom, except Esthland and Ruegen—­and with him went every man who could bear arms in all the nation.  He crushed the Black Count who tried to block his way, and at Bornhoeved met the German allies who had gathered from far and near to give him battle.  Well they knew that if Valdemar won, the reckoning would be terrible.  All day they fought, and victory seemed to lean toward the Danes, when the base Holsteiners, the Danish rear-guard whom the enemy had bought to betray their king, turned their spears upon his army, and decided the day.  The battle ended in utter rout of Valdemar’s forces.  Four thousand Danish men were slain.  The King himself fell wounded on the field, his eye pierced by an arrow, and would have fallen into the hands of the enemy once more but for an unknown German knight, who took him upon his horse and bore him in the night over unfrequented paths to Kiel, where he was safe.

“But all men said that this great hurt befell the King because that he brake the oath he swore upon the sacred body of the Lord.”

The wars of Valdemar were over, but his sorrows were not.  Four years later the crushing blow fell when Dagmar’s son, who was crowned king to succeed him, lost his life while hunting.  With him, says the folk-song, died the hope of Denmark.  The King had other sons, but to Dagmar’s boy the people had given their love from the first, as they had to his gentle mother.  The old King and his people grieved together.