Hamlet (legend) - Saxo's Version

Saxo's Version

According to Saxo, Hamlet's history is briefly as follows. Gervendill, governor of Jutland, was succeeded by his sons Horvendill and Feng. Horvendill, on his return from a Viking expedition in which he had slain Koll, king of Norway, married Gerutha, daughter of Rørik Slyngebond, king of Denmark; she bore him a son, Amleth. But Feng, out of jealousy, murdered Horvendill, and persuaded Gerutha to become his wife, on the plea that he had committed the crime for no other reason than to avenge her of a husband who had hated her. Amleth, afraid of sharing his father's fate, pretended to be an imbecile, but the suspicion of Feng put him to various tests which are related in detail. Among other things they sought to entangle him with a young girl, his foster-sister (the prototype of Ophelia), but his cunning saved him. When, however, Amleth slew the eavesdropper hidden (like Polonius in Shakespeare's play), in his mother's room, and destroyed all trace of the deed, Feng was assured that the young man's madness was feigned. Accordingly he dispatched him to Britain in company with two attendants, who bore a letter enjoining the king of the country to put him to death. Amleth surmised the purport of their instructions, and secretly altered the message on their wooden tablets to the effect that the king should put the attendants to death and give Amleth his daughter in marriage.

After marrying the princess, Amleth returned at the end of a year to Denmark. Of the wealth he had accumulated he took with him only certain hollow sticks filled with gold. He arrived in time for a funeral feast, held to celebrate his supposed death. During the feast he plied the courtiers with wine, and executed his vengeance during their drunken sleep by fastening down over them the woolen hangings of the hall with pegs he had sharpened during his feigned madness, and then setting fire to the palace. Feng he slew with his own sword. After a long harangue to the people he was proclaimed king. Returning to Britain for his wife he found that his father-in-law and Feng had been pledged each to avenge the other's death. The English king, unwilling to personally carry out his pledge, sent Amleth as proxy wooer for the hand of a terrible Scottish queen, Hermuthruda, who had put all former wooers to death but fell in love with Amleth. On his return to Britain his first wife, whose love proved stronger than her resentment, told him of her father's intended revenge. In the ensuing battle, Amleth won the day by setting up the fallen dead from the day before on stakes, thereby terrifying the enemy.

He then returned with his two wives to Jutland, where he had to encounter the enmity of Wiglek, Rørik's successor. He was slain in a battle against Wiglek, and Hermuthruda, although she had promised to die with him, married the victor. Saxo states that Amleth was buried on a plain (or "heath") in Jutland, famous for his name and burial place.

In 1933 a stone was raised in Amleth's memory on a burial mound near the tiny Jutlandic village of Ammelhede, which according to local tradition means "Amleth's heath" and is the site of the historical Hamlet's grave. However, the burial mound itself is from the Bronze Age, erected 1,700 years before the time that Hamlet was supposed to have lived according to Saxo. Wiglek died of illness and was the father of Wermund from whom the royal line of Kings of Mercia descended.