Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.2003, Side 89
Liturgy of St Knud Lavard - Introduction
75
that a spring burst forth where Knud feil, and in st. 4 (unfortunately cor-
rupt) that a wondrous sign was observed on the night before the murder:
fire appeared in the sky over Ringsted, presaging that the duke would be
laid to rest and work his miracles there. The motif of the spring has al-
ready been noticed in connection with the eleventh respond of the histo-
ria (p. 63 above) and is also present in the Gesta Dano rum and Com-
pendium Saxonis; the celestial fire, but not its portentous interpretation,
is in one of the surviving Arnamagnæan fragments of Robert of Ely (in
nocte proxima ante eius passionem apparuit super Rincstad splendor
ignis tantus, quod incendium ibi esse c rede retur).135 The vernacular
verse paraphrase of the Vita has here been adomed with details from
pious oral tradition.
Vedel rewrote the song of Knud Lavard for his Hundredvisebog,136
leaving out the superstitious motif of the portent in the sky but adding a
conclusion that dwells on the divine punishment meted out to Magnus,
who feli in battie and never achieved the ambition of becoming king.
This Vedel knew from Saxo, whose history he had translated in his
youth; in the headnote to his Sant Knud Hertug he remarks that all the
details of the duke’s life can be found ‘in Saxo’s chronicle in the thir-
teenth book’. But Vedel too must have known some form of the Vita, for
to the older song he adds a tell-tale detail in the account of the fatal
meeting between Magnus and Knud (st. 12, DV’s punctuation):
Hånd [Magnus] suarede strax: “Nu er det best,
at wi her Riget skiffte [...],”
a speech which corresponds to K 369 inter nos hoc modo melius diuidi
potest but is obscurely reported by Saxo (Magnus iam de regni succes-
sione [...] respondit, SaxoOR 355,26-27). Since the words of K are also
present in S (cf. VSD 210,[19-20]), it is a reasonable guess that Vedel
had a copy of the Schleswig breviary at his disposal in Ribe.
Vedel’s text was reprinted in 1695 by Peder Pedersen Syv in his en-
larged ballad anthology, a publication that enjoyed great popularity
135 Cf. SaxoOR 355,34-35 (Gesta); SMHD I 399,13-14 (Compendium); Robert of Ely: as
n. 86 above.
136 Anders Sørensen Vedels Hundredvisebog, facsimile ed. with introduction and notes by
Karen Thuesen, Copenhagen 1993, 154-55; also in DVIV 118-20.