He was eleven years old when his father died, and until he came of age the country was governed by a council of happily most able men who, with his mother, gave him such a schooling as few kings have had.  He not only became proficient in the languages, living and dead, and in mathematics which he put to such practical use that he was among the greatest of architects and ship-builders; he was the best all-round athlete among his fellows as well, and there was some sense in the tradition that survives to this day that whoever was touched by him in wrath did not live long, for he was very tall with a big, strong body, and when he struck, he struck hard.  He was a dauntless sailor who knew as much about sailing a ship as any one of his captains, and much more about building it.  Danger appealed to him always.  When the spire on the great cathedral in Copenhagen threatened to fall, he was the one who went up in it alone and gave orders where and how to brace it.

As he grew, he sat in the council of state, learning kingcraft, and showed there the hard-headed sense of fairness and justice that went with him through life.  He was hardly fourteen when the case of three brothers of the powerful Friis family came before the council.  They had attacked another young nobleman in the street, struck off one of his hands, and crippled the other.  Because of their influence, the council was for being lenient, atrocious as the crime was.  A fine was deemed sufficient.  The young prince asked if there were not some law covering the case with severer punishment, and was told that in the province of Skaane there was such a law that applied to serfs.  But the assault had not been committed in Skaane, and these were high noblemen.

“All the worse for them,” said the prince.  “Is then a serf in Skaane to have more rights under the law than a nobleman in the rest of Denmark?  Let the law for the serf be theirs.”  And the judgment stood.

He had barely attained his majority, when the young king was called upon to judge between another great noble and a widow whom he sued for 9000 daler, money he claimed to have lent to her husband.  In proof he laid before the judges two bonds bearing the signatures of husband and wife.  The widow denounced them as forgeries, but the court decided that she must pay.  She went straight to the King with her story, assuring him that she had never heard of the debt.  The King sent for the bonds and upon close scrutiny discovered that one of them was on paper bearing the water-mark of a mill that was not built till two years after the date written in the bond.  The noble was arrested and the search of his house brought to light several similar documents waiting their turn.  He went to the scaffold.  His rank only aggravated his offence in the eyes of the King.  No wonder the fame of this judge spread quickly through the land.