The Rest Is History - 71. England v Denmark

Episode Date: July 6, 2021

Ahead of the two countries’ encounter at Wembley, Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook discuss Anglo-Danish history through the ages. Vikings, the destruction of Copenhagen and royal dogs all feature prominently. A Goalhanger Films & Left Peg Media production Produced by Jack Davenport Exec Producer Tony Pastor *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. In the summer of 1003, a Viking army descended on southern Wiltshire. Their target was the town of Wilton. Wilton was a place of deep symbolic significance to the Anglo-Saxon monarchy. It was the site of a nunnery where many members of the royal family had been nuns. Some of them had become saints. There was no prospect then that the English would cede this holy place to the invading Danes. Sure enough, an Anglo-Saxon army drew up on the hill above Wilton to oppose the Danish advance.

The man in charge looked down at the Danes spread out below him and then, according to the Anglo-Saxon chronicle, he feigned himself ill and began to retch and vomit and said that he was sick. His bowels loosened, his legs gave way beneath him, He turned and he ran. The entire English army went with him. The Vikings captured Wilton and put it to the torch. Dominic Sandbrook with me. This is not the kind of behaviour that we want to see on Wednesday, is it, from our brave boys on Wembley if they get confronted. Well, when they get confronted by the Danes,

but if they have to face a penalty shootout. This is such a depressing way to start. I mean, if Gareth Southgate's lads behave like that on Wednesday evening, that would be the worst moment in the history of English sport, surely. You can't imagine Harry Maguire turning and running away. No, no, no, he won't.

Pretending to be sick. No. But I think it does draw attention to the way in which, I mean, we've, so we went on Adrian Charles to talk about Anglo-Scottish rivalry, which obviously has a very distinguished pedigree. And we've done a podcast on Anglo-German rivalry. But I reckon in some ways, this is the oldest rivalry of all. And I say that because England and Denmark are, of all the countries that are playing

in the Euros, are the ones with the oldest continuous history. Yeah, but before we get into the elements of that history, I mean, there's an argument, isn't there, that England was created. I mean, we've talked before about how Britain was created as an anti-French kind of enterprise. Couldn't you argue that England exists because of the Danes, that England was created as an anti-Danish sort of conglomeration? Absolutely, because it's Danish invasion that essentially destroys the kind of patchwork of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms that had previously existed. So Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia all get demolished. The only one that holds out, I'm proud to say, wessex the kingdom of the

wessex where i come from what about mercia mercia held out didn't it no it's king runs away all right i'm afraid i'm afraid um but i i grew up just outside wilton so that's why i'm very familiar with that particular story yeah and it's heroic king alfred um his heroic son edward his heroic daughter athelflad his his heroic grandson Athelstan. They lead the fight back against the Danes and the fight back enables them to kind of reconstitute Wessex as the kingdom of England. So before we get into all this and all the events of that story, they rock up at Lindisfarne, don't they the most one of them used to be one of the most famous dates in in english history um so what year what year is that they arrive and they ravage the monastery and stuff seven nine three and at that point so here's my question as a complete and utter non-specialist when i learned about that um at school or in the sort

of through the ladybird books that we were talking about in the children's history episode um the words vikings and danes were used kind of interchangeably are these people from denmark are they danes that's a really really good question and one that is very difficult to answer because um these kind of markers in early medieval history are incredibly slippery really really hard to pin down so they're described as northmen but right swedes were called northmen uh but northmen are also danes um danes um are so in poetry are often jutes um the jutes say to asser the biography of of alfred are are goths so there's an incredible sense of confusion about it yeah so so essentially the danes in in um in the anglo-saxon period

they are northmen in general say what we would call vikings yeah um they are that they're they're they're members of the of uh the war bands that attack France. So the Vikings attack France. So they are called Danes. And they obviously later become Normans, don't they? Yeah. So Normans are also called Danes, confusingly. The Danes are, in the English context, are the people who invade England, who carve it up, who then get given a chunk of territory that comes to be called the Danelaw. They are also inhabitants of Denmark. And that's why I say that it's not just England,

it's also, in a sense, the Viking Age creates this unitary kingdom of Denmark, which is also very, very ancient. And that's why this kind of rivalry is is is so fascinating intriguing and can be and in fact can be traced back even further than um than the viking invasions because of course the danes appear in beowulf which yeah tell us about beowulf okay so so so beowulf is um the kind of the greatest epic in old english and we don't know when it's written down so there are kind of various alternatives maybe it's it's very early Maybe it's the time of Alfred. Maybe it's the time of, it's in the 10th century. We're not sure. But it doesn't actually feature anyone from England. But it does feature Beowulf, who's a Geat from southern Sweden, who goes to see a king called

Hrothgar, who is the king of the Danes. At Herod. At Herod, which then provides the model for Tolkien's, the Hall of Théoden in Lord of the Rings. Meduseld. But also there's a figure in Beowulf who's called Hegelac, who is described by Gregory of Tours, the Frankish writer, as invading and attacking Gaul in the 6th century.

So actually the roots of the Danes, as raiders, as poets, as having kind of interaction with the English, is even older than the age of Alfred and even older than the attack on Lindisfarne. So that's why this is, for anyone with a sense of history, the sight of Danish fans in the stands with their Viking horns and their bristling blonde beards is very exciting. Well, I was about to say our ancestors would have regarded this with utter terror, wouldn't they?

Because, of course, they learned to dread the sight of the dragon ships and the raiders pouring off the ships. But I say our ancestors but you know there's been tons of sort of studies of dna and stuff aren't i mean isn't there a case that basically this is this is a family a family row really because a lot of us are danes one way or another well i mean interesting that's a point made by um admiral nelson who i'm sure we'll come to later in the podcast. He famously attacks Copenhagen in 1801,

sinks the Danish fleet. And then shortly after he's done that, he writes a letter to the Danish authorities in which he hails them as the brothers of Englishmen, the Danes, which is very fraternal of him. I bet they forgave him for that then. Yeah, but there's a measure of truth to it. That of course, as with the Scots, as with the Germans, this isn't just a story of rivalry.

This is also, there's this close sense of kinship here. And that's why the start of Beowulf, this famous old English epic, has a Danish setting. Well, I mean, lots of our listeners will probably know, particularly the British listeners, that if you go east in Englandland if you go north and east you get all these places that are called thwait and thorpe and so on at the end of the name and those are the places where the danes settled aren't they they're part of the yeah the dane law the the part of england that was danish and of

course there are two am i right in thinking again as an utter non-specialist and outsider to all this that there were sort of two heroic periods of Danish conquest in England. So there's the one at the time of Alfred and all of that stuff. And then there's later on with, I'm sure we're going to have some fun with, Knut. The amusingly named Knut. Yes. So Alfred lives in the context of the invasion of what's called the Great Northern Army, which is this massive kind of war band which first demolishes the kingdom of Northumbria in the north, occupies York. So that's why in the north you get this very strong kind of Danish presence and sense. They're there for decades, in fact, centuries.

And this is based in York, isn't it? York is the capital of the sort of... But they then move on East Anglia. And there's a kind of heroic story around this. We wave the flag of St. George at the football, but we could very easily have a very different emblem. We could have a crown and two arrows as the emblem of England. Because the national saint of England for much of the Middle Ages was St. Edmund, who was the king of the East Angles, who was captured by the Vikings, by the Danes, refused to apostatise, refused to give up his Christianity and was shot to death with arrows by the Danes. Now, Tom, I know this because it's in Bernard Cornwell.

And in the TV adaptation of The Last Kingdom, they have a great scene where he's kind of, I think they hang him up in a church or something. And that's right. They keep saying, you know, where is your God now firing? And this is attested in the Chronicles, is it? This is. It is. And they chop off his head and they dump his head in a wood and they dump his body elsewhere.

And his followers come and rescue his body to keep it as a relic. But they can't find his head. And then they hear coming from the wood the sound hic, hic, hic, which isn't someone drunk. It's a wolf crying out in Latin here, here, here. And the wolf is standing guard over the head and they're able to pick up the head and bury it and so saint edmund becomes the patron saint of of the angles and in due course of the danes who become christian in due course and adopt him and he is the the patron saint of england for much of the middle ages and there are lots of people who continue to think that he should be the patron saint among them the the wonderful historian dr francis young who has written an entire book on

st edmund and who once took me to berry st edmunds and showed me the site of tennis court where supposedly um the relics remain to this day under the tennis court he's absolutely itching to dig it up but the tennis players for berry st edmunds are less keen on this. But I hope he gets a chance. But anyway, he tweeted, of course, I hope England win against Denmark. But on the other hand, if the Danes beat us, it will give me an excuse to create endless St Edmund memes. But this is very ominous because this is a sort of heroic failure story. This is Gazza's tears crashing out. I mean, Edmund lost.

I mean, his head was cut off. But we didn't, in our most recent match against Denmark we lost didn't we we lost 1-0 well it was a friendly I think wasn't it was it a friendly so so we lost against the Vikings against the Danes when St Edmund got shot to death but we then ultimately won because the Danes all got converted to Christianity and accepted him as a saint so I see it as a positive sign I think I I think that with St. Edmund looking down from heaven, everything's going to be okay. Well, this is what I was going to ask you. So the fellows who are involved with the killing of Edmund and are leading the great Northern army, as I recall

from the last Kingdom Watching, Guthrum, who's a very sort of lugubrious, melancholy fellow, and ends up being the leader of the Great Northern Army. Doesn't he? Or at least the most famous of these sort of warlords. There's also a guy with the brilliant name of Hubba. Hubba, right. Which I think is the best name of an invader of England ever. Is it Hubba?

Because in Bernard Cornwell, he's renamed Ubba. Hubba is much funnier. Hubba is funnier. So Guthrum, this is an extraordinary thing, isn't it? He arrives in England and, you know, sort of putting the historian's hat firmly on, you can sort of imagine there's obviously a push-pull with the Viking invasions.

They're driven out because of competition for land or whatever in Scandinavia, but they're also drawn by the wealth of England. He arrives and he adopts the local religion eventually, doesn't he? I mean, does Alfred basically force him to do that? Is that what happens? So the kingdom of Wessex holds out against kind of overwhelming force. And the Vikings are fleet, aggressive, and they're treacherous, or at least to the West Saxons, they seem treacherous because they least to the west saxons they seem treacherous

because they don't basically hold to oaths and the ultimate mark of their treachery is that they attack chippenham where alfred is holding court on 12th night so during the festival of christmas and this is very much not the dumb thing it's it's it's a kind of red card offense really but if i you know the danes aren't playing by the rules so they don't care so that's when alfred flees to the marshes of Athelni. He burns the cakes. He recruits men. He leads an army out.

He defeats the Danes. And he draws up a treaty whereby Guthrum will become a Christian. He takes on the Christian name of Athelstan. And he gets what comes to be called the Danelaw, which is basically East Anglia, Lincolnshire. And if you imagine Mersey with a line drawn from the Mersey down to the Thames, he gets the eastern half of that. And Alfred then, having won in attack, then kind of consolidates his lead by building a great line of what are called burrs, kind of fortified market towns market towns again along that line from the Mersey down to the Thames and the Vikings can't really break through that and in due course they kind of smash themselves and smash themselves against this mighty line of defense yeah and then uh rather

like on Saturday night um England go on the attack um and athelflat who is alfred's daughter the lady of the mercians i think the most heroic female political figure in in english history her brother edward who's the king of the west saxons they go on the attack um they they end up conquering all of england south of the humber um and then it's athelstan who is alfred's grandson uh then conquers northumbria and takes it back from the Danes. And it's not a kind of, effectively, this is the making of England. England then becomes a United Kingdom. The Danes do make a comeback. They recapture York. They actually capture quite a large swathe of land south of the Humber, but they get pushed back. And by the time that Athelstan's nephew,

Edgar, becomes king, England is precociously unified. And what Edgar does is to insist on a kind of unitary currency. So all the silver comes directly under royal control. And that's a kind of degree of control over taxation, control over money that is absolutely unique in Western Europe. The only other empires that are doing it are Al-Andalus in the south of Spain and the Byzantine Empire. But no other kind of successor kingdom to the Roman Empire is doing it. And this makes England seem rich. It makes it seem strong. But it's a bit like kind of, I don't know, walking down a dark alley with a kind of diamond necklace sticking out of your back pocket. Because, you know, the muggers, well, they're in Ireland.

So the Vikings have founded Dublin, the Blackpool, Dublin is Blackpool. But they're also, of course, across the North Sea. So they've still got their eyes on England. And under the reign of Edward's son, Æthelred, unread, ill-advised, the Danes come back. Before we come to that, Tom, you skated over something I thought pretty shamefully, which is that the great battle that Aethelflaed and Edward, I think, fight against the Danes.

It's Aethelflaed and her fame. Edward has nothing to do with it. He pitches up late. Does he pitch up afterwards or something? It's in Wolverhampton, isn't it? It's the Battle of Teton Hall, or some people say Weddensfield, so those are two different parts of Wolverhampton. I like to say Tettenhall because my grandparents used to live in Tettenhall.

But Weddensfield is more romantic. Well, it's Wodensfield. Yeah. Yes. So the Vikings have launched a great... So Athelflaed has invaded Lincolnshire to grab back the relics of a saint, which he then buries in Gloucester to serve as a kind of spiritual Star Wars, an iron dome, to absolutely protect it with supernatural power.

And the Danes are so cross about this that they then launch a massive invasion. They loot and burn. As they're going back through Wolverhampton, the future site of Wolverhampton, they get attacked at a river and they perish beneath a rain of spears, the Anclay Saxon. I mean, that happens to a lot of visiting fans when they go to Wolverhampton, to be fair. So, Tom, at this point, right, the Danes and the English, the English have started to see themselves as the English, haven't they? It's kind of in

opposition to the Danes, I suppose. How different are they? Because in, let's say, the most famous fictional iteration of this, which is now the Bernard Cornwell books, there is this sense of a kind of culture clash between the pagan Danes who like, you know, drinking and having fun and killing people and the slightly more sort of serious and pious English who are all about kind of God and monasteries and stuff. Is that rooted in a genuine cultural difference? Or would they have recognized one another as kind of brethren,

if you like, with actually similar roots, similar habits, all that sort of stuff? What's the answer there the during during the the wars that that alfred and his um heirs fight um i think there is a sense of of difference uh and it it's much greater during the time of alfred before guthrum and his followers get baptized yeah but even once they've been baptized they are kind kind of alien figures. But they adapt very, very quickly. They become devoutly Christian because they see that the Christian God has basically defeated them. And they come under the cultural influence and the economic influence of the much stronger West Saxon monarchy. So I've got a wonderful coin, which I own, which was found in a pile of

coins in Rome, taken there by a Dane from East Anglia on pilgrimage. And it's a fake. It's a fake made by the Danes in the Dane law to simulate one of the coins stamped by Edward Alfred's son. So what you see there is evidence, and then he's going on pilgrimage to Rome. So he's become English to the degree that he's adopted the English religion, and he is kind of economically subordinate. So the influence, the cultural influence of England is very great. I mean, having said that, you do get fulminations from Anglo-Saxon moralists complaining about Danish habits, which include wearing eyeliner. Oh, that's bad. Shaving the back of your head. So no mullets for Vikings.

Right. And worst of all, having baths every Saturday. When Saturday comes, you have a bath. The eyeliner of a bath seems very new romantic to me. Well, very effeminate. It's regarded as the height of effeminacy

by the manly and upright Anglo-Saxons. I never thought of the Danes as effeminate. I mean, if Danes listeners will be pleased to hear that I always have thought

of the Danes as very vigorous, virile kind of characters. There's a lot to tease out there, obviously. Yeah, not least in my tortured subconscious, I suppose. So let me ask you a question about the Dane law.

The Dane law, are the people there conscious of themselves, let's say their second or third generation, do they still think of themselves as Danes or do they think of themselves as English, would you say? Yeah, I think so. Well, kind of.

Or is that too simplistic a question? I mean, it tends to fade over the generations, but obviously the impact of spoken Danish is evident in the place names. Yes. And I think it does last for quite a while. But I mean, it's certainly complicated by the way that Danish settlers come to accept, say, Edmund as their... evident in in the place names uh and i think it does last for quite a for quite a while but i mean it's certainly complicated by the way that danish settlers come to accept say edmund as their yeah their patron um so it is complex and even you know and it's it it a further sign of how complex it is

is that when under um athored you start to get get the Danes coming back in increasing numbers. They are doing it as Christians. They've become Christian and it doesn't stop them. Aethelred the Unready, I remember in my Lady Bird, Kings and Queens of England or Anglo-Saxon Kings or whatever it was called. He came out very poorly. Not as badly as King John that we did a few weeks ago, who we agreed was, in your words, a shit.

But Æthelred the Unready, he was the Theresa May of kings, wasn't he? He was just floundering from crisis to crisis, basically. And what goes wrong there? How come the Danes sweep back in such numbers? There is a wonderful biography of him. I mean, biography in the least sense, because you can't really write a biography in the modern sense by Levi Roach, which does a good job at attempt at revisionism. Basically, he's dealt a very tough hand

and he's incredibly rich relative to everyone else. And so he obviously, he does a sensible thing. He tries to buy them off. Dane Geld. That's the famous Dane Geld. Yeah. But the problem is, as Kipling goes on to point out, that if you pay Dane Geld, then more the famous Dane Geld. Yeah. But the problem is, as Kipling goes on to point out, that if you pay Dane Geld, then more and more people will come.

And it ends up with a situation where the kingdom gets conquered. Æthelred flees to Normandy, comes back, dies. He's succeeded by his son, Edmund Ironside, who is a proper storming centre-forward, hence his nickname. But he kind of fights to a standstill with with Knut um Knut he then dies supposedly on the on the toilet um quite a lot of people supposedly die on the toilet in this period as a matter of fact this is a theme of whenever you talk about the vikings well it is well I've already mentioned Knut's grandfather

um Harold Bluetooth twice I think on this this podcast as the guy who first of all famously gives his name to Bluetooth technology but also ends up being shot in the arse by an archer while he's having a dump but Harold Bluetooth is also significant he's the first Christian king right he's the first king who converts to Christianity and so Svein Fortbred his son who is actually the guy who leads the attack on Wilton that we began this podcast with. That's Svein Fortbeard. Ankenut are supposedly Christian, but that doesn't stop them being any the less terrifying. They are masters of a huge North Sea empire. Am I right? An empire that looks like

one of the most potent states in Northern Europe, if not the most potent. Yeah. So Bluetooth, one of the reasons why Bluetooth technology is named after it is that there's this stone yelling in Denmark where Harold Bluetooth puts up this inscription where he talks about, he boasts about the way that he has joined people together. And by that he means, you know, South Norway, South Sweden, brought them all together. And his son, his grandson, then move on to conquer England as well. And let's ask the question that a lot of listeners will be asking, which is about Canute and the waves. Yes. We've got Michael FKA, haven't we? Have you got that?

I have. Michael FKA says, very much looking forward to the Knut acknowledges the inexorable power of the English tide analogy. Yes. But unfortunately, well, Knut's... Now, this is always painted as Knut is an oaf

and a fool who is washed... No, it's the opposite. But it's completely wrong, isn't it? It's the opposite. Knut is actually... It's his courtiers who are the fools and he is the wise man so so Knut is terrifying he's young he's mean he's incredibly rapacious once he's become king of England he imposes a 100 tax rate that's that's harsh that sort of makes Dennis Healy look like a tax cutter. He makes the pips squeak. The whole revenue of a single year in England goes into his coffers.

But he then slightly calms down. A mere 90% next time. Christianity and the traditions of Anglo-Saxon monarchy are prestigious and stylish. He wants to be a part of it. I guess it's got Peter Schmeichel coming to Manchester United. Yeah and Mulby who arrived in England speaking with a very strong Danish accent and ended

with a Scouse accent because he'd played for Liverpool all those years. There you go so that's kind of what I like to see. That's Knut the analogy and he becomes a model of Christian kingship so he actually endows Wilton prodigiously, there's kind of wonderful illustrations of him and his queen doing that. And the story of him

holding back the tide, it's his response to a flatterer who says that you're capable of doing anything. And he says, no, I can't. So he orders his court to come down and he puts the uh the throne by the on the beach and he holds his hand up to stop the tide and of course the tide comes in and the the point is about the inadequacy of human beings compared to god and so so basically he becomes i suppose to that extent um anglicized he then then has two sons, Harold Harefoot and Harthacnut. And then you're into... They're incredibly boring. They kind of don't really

do anything. He then gets seated by Edward the Confessor. Edward the Confessor gets seated by Harold Godwinson. Then you have William the Conqueror. And it's under William the Conqueror in 1069, so three years after the Battle of Hastings, that you get the final Danish attempt at an invasion when another Danish king called Svein is invited over by rebels in the north, comes up the Humber, occupies York. William advances, the rebels flee, the Danes are kind of stranded, so they get back in their ships.

They go down to East Anglia again, as their forebears had done. They ravage East Anglia. William the Conqueror pays them Dengeld. He bribes them to go away. Does he? I didn't know that about William the Conqueror. Yeah, he does. They sail away, and that is basically it. Why don't they come back ever again?

I suppose they've been sufficiently Christianised that that tradition is starting to fade the tradition of becoming a viking is starting to fade but it's also the the strength and the power of um the norman monarch that that william establishes um and the sense of a kind of christian commonality between all the various kingdoms um so i think that if we're talking anglo-danish relations it's very much a game of two halves well i was about to say so the first half it's it's the Danes kicking sand in the faces of the English. So what's the score? Second half. What's the score, would you say, Tom?

I think it's 3-1 to Denmark, I think. 3-1 to Denmark. That's bad. If it's 3-1 at halftime on Wednesday, I shall be deeply disappointed. Well, if it's 1-3, I shall be deeply disappointed. But it's a game of two halves. It is a game of two halves. Let's see what happens in the second half.

We'll see. So back they go to the dressing rooms. Gareth Southgate can have a word and we'll see if the picture changes after the break. See you in a minute. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman and together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of

entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip and on our Q&A we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members club if you want ad-free listening bonus episodes and early access to live tickets head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. Welcome back to The Rest Is History. For our international listeners who are baffled after the first half hour of this podcast, I should say that this is a podcast about Anglo-Danish relations to tie in with the semi-final of Euro 2020 being played in 2021

at Wembley between England and Denmark on Wednesday evening. Tom and I are very excited. Everybody in England basically is very overexcited, aren't they, Tom? And I assume everybody in Denmark too. The Danes are leading after the first historical half, 3-1, after Tom Holland's description of their various assaults on England in the Viking Age. Tom, I think we're going to leap forward in time, aren't we now?

I'm not aware of the Danes doing anything in the sort of 13th,th 15th century you i mean they must be not really but nothing nothing worth discussing i think we should leap right forward do you have anything to say before we get to the stewart era no or not no cut let's let's cut let's cut to let's cut to james the first james the sixth it is the it is the proverbial game of two halves so i I have done a bit of digging into the story of Anne of Denmark, who is an extraordinary figure. So Anne of Denmark marries James VI of Scotland, who becomes James I of England. She's the second daughter of Frederick II of Denmark. So the sort of early modern period is quite a... Denmark's a pretty sizable, you know, sort of military power. And also it's Lutheran, isn't it?

It is. And so there aren't that many Lutheran kingdoms. No. And there's certainly not many Protestant kingdoms. And so that's the key. I mean, these are great days for Sweden and Denmark, actually. They're really sort of fighting for control of the Baltic and stuff. But a Danish alliance is much to be prized if you're a Protestant. So

James VI of Scotland is married to Anne of Denmark when she's 14. And at first they get on pretty well, but just before he's about to become King of England it all starts to go wrong. So they first fall out bizarrely because over the custody

of their son. So they're not divorced, but they still have fallen out of the custody because apparently the practice in Scotland is the eldest son is given away to be brought up. And she just thought, this is like a sort of ancestor of people sending their kids away to boarding school. To Gordonstoun.

Yeah, sort of incredibly vicious boarding schools like Prince Charles at the age of two or something. And Anne of Denmark is outraged that her son Henry is given to the Earl of Mar to be. And that sort of, I think that kind of creates a bit of a riff that never really heals. So then just before James comes to England, there's a thing called the Gowrie Conspiracy,

where these two guys, I think they're two guys, they have a plot to kill James. This is happening all the time in Scotland in the late 16th century and they're killed by his attendants and then not unreasonably he wants to get rid

of their sisters who are her ladies in waiting, his wife's ladies in waiting so he says well obviously their sisters can't stay on as ladies and waiting after they've tried to kill me um the queen fair enough anna denmark is outraged by this and she stages a hunger strike but she stays in bed she won't get out of bed because she's really close to them and um eventually james mollifies her by hiring an

acrobat and sending the acrobat to entertain her and kind of lure her out of bed. Does it work? It does work. I mean, the hunger strike is over. But I think there's still bad blood because they go to England. They establish a household. He sends a message to her after a while. He says he doesn't like her English household.

He sends her a message. His Majesty takes her continued perversity very heinously, which I think is a marital message you don't want to receive. He sends her a message, His Majesty takes her continued perversity very heinously, which I think is a marital message you don't want to receive. And doesn't she eat his dog or something? Yes, exactly. Dead dogs. If anyone listens to this podcast for the first time, dead dogs are a theme of our podcast.

And James had a dog called either Jewel or Jowler. They're quite different names, I think. I mean, you picture the dog very differently if it's called Jewel or Jowler. Anyway, Jewel or Jowler is his favourite dog. Supposedly, he's, quote, his special and most favourite hound. And she shoots him with a crossbow.

Just by accident or deliberately? It's really hard to make out. I had to look at the original source and it's very unclear that's quite a quite a quite a drastic move isn't it it's very drastic if your wife killed your pet dog with the crossbow i mean that's that's pretty yes i mean it's hard to come back from that james apparently i mean this is such a strange story. He was absolutely furious when he saw his dog with the crossbow bolt. He would be. And he went round in an enormous huff. And his servant said, well, it's actually the queen who did it. And at that point, supposedly, this is such a weird story.

He calms down. He's not so angry. He sent her a jewel worth £2,000. So that suggests the dog's name is Jewel, surely. Right, which is the equivalent. Well, maybe there's some confusion, though. Well, which is the equivalent of about £10 million today. And he says, quote, it was a legacy from his dear dead dog.

I mean, that's worthy of the Jeremy Thorpe scandal. Yeah, that's great. Why would you do that? Why didn't we remember this when we were going through our list of famous dead dogs? Well, we didn't know about it. I mean, let's be honest. When you say remember it,

I mean, we didn't know it until about a day ago. Oh, no, I think... Did you know this? Yes, I did. I didn't know this. I did. I knew that she killed his dog. And suddenly, thinking about it, it came back to me.

Yeah. Now, of course, I suppose what lies behind a lot of this, though, Tom, is that James I's sexuality is in some doubt, isn't it? So I think by this point. And he's slobbered. Yeah. His tongue's too big for his mouth. Yes.

So he's obsessed by witches. His tongue's too big for his mouth. He slobbers. He's always going after young men with very long legs. The Duke of Buckingham. He's got a fancy for the Duke of Buckingham. So presented with all this, this Danish queen just driven mad. But from the point of view of Anglo-Danish rivalry,

I want to point out he is, of course, Scottish. Yes, although he's also the King of England. He is the King of England. I mean, we're not just subsuming Scotland. There is a further dimension to this. Yes. Pointed out by none other than Simon Sharma. Yes.

Queen Anne. Isn't it weird that Hamlet was performed before king james and and um queen anne at hampton court especially since james's mother's story not on altogether unlike gertrude well this is the thing i think this lies behind the dog murder yeah right she has moved to england she's moved to scotland first then to england uh she's been forced to watch plays about Denmark that paint Danish history in a very dark and convoluted light. But, I mean, so on the Shakespeare angle, James, when he went to pick her up, he does visit Elsinore, which is the setting for Hamlet.

Have you been to Elsinore? I have been to Elsinore. It's great. It's a great castle. It has a remarkable thing among tourist attractions, which I almost admire them forore it's great it has it's a great castle it has a remarkable thing among tourist attractions which I almost

admire them for because it's so shameless you have to when we went you have to follow a very particular route

you can't sort of deviate they have kind of cellars don't they it's a one-way system yeah but the one-way system leads you twice

through the gift shop through different parts of the gift shop I didn't remember that but obviously blank but if you travel around with a child, you know, you really do notice it because you have faced two barrages of

can I buy a sword? Can I buy a Hamlet's helmet or something? Yeah, so anyway, Anne really matters because her brother is going to play a big part in, well, he always plays. Well, Dominic yeah so just on the shakespeare theme there are two other famous tragedies that have an anglo-danish link one is one is macbeth because when they're coming back so when ann is is and james are coming back um

across the north sea the terrible storms and james blames this on witches so that's kind of part of what turbo charges his obsession with witchcraft and there's an allusion to this in in Macbeth with the witches that okay that but the other one is so Christian IV who is Anne's I think younger brother and a very powerful king yes massive lad um he comes over on a state visit he does I was going to mention this. I'm gutted that you've got him first. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. But the reason I mentioned it with the Shakespeare context is that they have a kind of rendezvous on a ship. So James comes down on a rather wussy barge. And Christian has this massive ship. And they meet up and have a rendezvous on the ship like Antony and Octavian in Antony Cleopatra. Oh, that's a good fact. James Shapiro, in his book on Shakespeare in 1606, suggests that this was the inspiration for that passage in Antony and Cleopatra. Don't know whether that's true or not, but it's a Shakespearean Anglo-Danish angle.

See, what I was going to say about Christian IV, he comes over on a state visit in 1606 to visit his sister, and it goes incredibly well well stroked badly because the Danes are very hard drinking and they all drink a colossal amount and everybody at court is struck by this and they stage at James's country house they put on a mask of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba and it turns into an absolute fiasco because the Danes have all been drinking all day and they encourage the English to drink as well. And many of the actors are so drunk they fall over and can't say their lines.

A custom more honoured in the breach than in the observance. Very good. As Hamlet would say. Very good. Very good. Okay, I think that's enough about Queen Anne because we've got to move on because we've still got lots more to cover. Christian IV is still in the... he's hovering about because... Oh yes, of course, of course.

Because... And now we've got Dan Jackson's tweet. Yeah, because, right, Charles I, who is half Danish. I'd never thought of him as half Danish. But Charles I is basically the personification of English history. Half Dane,

well, half Scottish, actually, isn't he? Yes. He, at the outbreak of the Civil War, jackson points out asks christian the fourth for military aid something i did not know at all and the danes have you got have you got the tweet there tom from i have yes so so dan dan jackson who of course uh author of northumbrians who appeared on our um north south divide episode says if you're musing on Anglo-Danish relations, then this is intriguing.

In 1642, Charles I asked his uncle, Christian IV, for military aid, but in return, the Danes wanted Orkney, Shetland, and to gain possession of Newcastle in Porn. And the motive for this seems to have been commercial, as Newcastle was renowned for her coal and salt industries. So, you know, Danish Newcastle. Yeah.

They wanted the Danor back, basically, clearly. Yeah, basically, yeah. And they didn't get it. But it didn't work out, did it? No. So Christian IV later, I believe, sent some people with ships and a load of armour to offer to Charles I.

And somehow they are detained by parliamentarians and beaten up or something and then sent back, and nothing comes of it. So that's a great missed opportunity for Denmark. And Dominic, do we have anything on Anglo-Danish relations between that and 1801? We don't, but 1801 is such a great date. I think we should get straight to 1801. So tell us why 1801 is a great date.

So 1801, the Napoleonic Wars, the British have tried to... The French and the British have imposed rival blockades on each other, and all the Baltic countries, Russia, Prussia, Denmark, Sweden, they want to break the British blockade.

They want to carry on trading. And the British are having none of this. Nelson, who's been off around the world, is sent off to the Baltic and is told, you know, you have to impose the blockade and stop these people breaking out. And especially we're worried that they might join the French. Nelson says, well, in his sort of swashbuckling spirit, he says, well, let's just let's just blow them all up. So he goes off into Copenhagen harbour and the Admiral Parker waits behind him. And on the 2nd of April, 1801, Nelson attacks.

And he attacks with such force, there's huge amounts of smoke all over the harbour. And the Admiral sends him a signal to withdraw, basically worried that British ships are running aground. Now, the Admiral kind of knows that if things are going well, Nelson will ignore it, and that's precisely what Nelson does. So Nelson says to his flag captain, the man called Thomas Foley, he's been told there's a signal.

He says to Foley, you know, Foley, I have only one eye. I have a right to be blind sometimes. And he lifts the telescope and he puts it to the blind eye because he's been blinded in Corsica in 1794. And he says, I really do not see the signal, which of course he doesn't. So we carry on attacking. We capture six Danish ships.

We sink three of them. And as a reward for this, Nelson is made Viscount Nelson of the Nile, which is a great title. Now I will say, this story is probably untrue. I mean, that's such a shame. So Roger Knight, who is Nelson's biographer, says this stuff about the telescope is probably

an apocryphal story created after the event. But that needn't stop it being an inspiration for anyone threatened with substitution. On Wednesday night, I do not see it. My blind eye has turned. And then going on to score the winning goal.

Yes. So that might be the parallel. Maybe. So we have that, but then we also have another attack in 1807. Yeah. So if you're Danish listening to this, that's the one you'll probably remember,

not 1801. Because this is really bad, because we basically just, it's a preemptive strike, isn't it? Yeah. We're worried about them joining the French again. This time we just think, go for it. Yeah.

The British land, 30,000 troops. They bombard Copenhagen. Go on, Tom. You've got something to say. Okay. Well, I just, yeah. So this is pretty shameful, actually, which is obviously why people in England don't know about it.

But one person who does know about it unexpectedly to me is Lord Frost, who, of course, was the Brexit negotiator. The chief Brexit. Has he threatened this? He should threaten this during Brexit negotiations. No, but before he became the Brexit negotiator, he was a diplomat. Right. And he was the ambassador to Copenhagen. So he tweeted yesterday, I have something you may be interested in for your Anglo-Danish episode,

my own rough translation into English done when I was ambassador in Denmark of the pamphlet we published with the Danish authorities about the 1807 siege of Copenhagen. Tom, are you receiving advice about the podcast from our chief Brexit negotiator?

Yes, I am. Yes. Oh, i am yes oh yeah that's a nice and there's some there's a fantastic description of it of um of all the uh the kind of the gun you know the firing these um missiles that they developed and uh yeah so they congreve congreve congreve rockets which are the same invention of the um of the kingdom of my saw that then got developed by congreve and fired at Copenhagen. They're the rockets that are bursting in the Star Spangled Banner. Yes. We use them at the same time.

Yes, they're very simple. We fire them at Copenhagen. But we also have another tweet from Tapani Simajoki, who is a Lutheran pastor in Hampshire. You've got all the contacts, haven't you? Yes. Yes. Yes. And he discusses a hymn, Built on the Rock, The Church Doth Stand, which he says was inspired retrospectively by the deliberate destruction of the Church of Our Lady, which was a medieval church, by the British in the Battle of Copenhagen. A famously godly lot, the British gunners used the spire for range practice. Yes.

Well, this is true. We did. So our gunners did use the church spires um to get their sights and they just blasted the hell out of them yeah so there we go so a lot of help there from yes from a very a brexit uh finnish uh axis there so thank you to lord frost and to the parney for for uh for that one other quick um one of One other quick Napoleonic Wars reference is that to honour, in tribute to Nelson's heroics at Copenhagen,

if heroics you can call them, the Duke of Wellington called his horse Copenhagen. Of course he did. He was foaled during the attack. And the nearest Wellington came to death at the Battle of Waterloo was when he got off Copenhagen at the end. Copenhagen tried to kick him

and almost kicked him in the head, which would have killed him. And Copenhagen is still buried, I believe, at the Duke of Wellington's house at Stratford Say. Stratfield Say, sorry. Wonderful. Yes, there you go. Okay, well, there you go.

Now, I think you have an excellent, excellent story suggested by Nelson Jones. Am I right? Yes, I do. so to read nelson's um what i've got nelson's suite if you don't have it yeah no i got it um so he's this is on the anglo-danish theme some will say nelson others the great northern army but for me the absolute low point in anglo-danish relations was has christian anderson outaying his welcome at Dickens' house, which is indeed a great story of Anglo-Danish hostility. So go on, Tom.

You take us into the story. So Hans Christian Andersen, Hans Christian Andersen and Dickens, probably two colossal 19th century writers. Hans Christian Andersen, author of The Little Mermaid, statue of which stands in Copenhagen to this day. He comes to England when his stories first get published

in English on a kind of book tour. And he meets with Dickens in 1847 at an aristocratic soiree. And Dickens, very polite, says, oh, I like your stuff. Hans Christian Andersen idolises Dickens and is all over him and he goes back to uh copenhagen and basically writes to dickens pretty much every day in the most effusive terms and dickens kind of dead bats this and dead bats this but had made the terrible mistake we've all done it we've all done things like this, haven't we? I say, oh, well, if you come back to London, you must look me up.

Which Anderson, in due course, in 1857, so a decade later, does. And he goes to Gad's Hill, Dickens' house. Well, wait a second, Tom. Does he not say, I'm going to come for at most, at most, yeah, something like, it's either two days or two weeks, but anyway, it's a short period of time.

So he turns out at Gad's Hill, Dickens' house out by Rochester. And it's a terrible time for Dickens because his marriage is breaking up. He's just published a little Dorrit, which hasn't done very well. And he's in the midst of rehearsing for a play with Wilkie Collins. So he's got lots on his plate, as Christian Anderson turns up, and is an absolutely monstrous house guest. So first of all, he declares that it's the custom in Denmark for the son of the host to shave the guest every day.

That's such a high-risk gambit from a guest, isn't it? I mean, it goes wrong it is and so dickens's sons refuse to do this and they send him off into rochester to have his shaving done there hans christian anderson won't leave dickens alone and they're going into a dinner party dickens offers his arm to a lady hans christian anderson rushes in elbows the lady's side takes his arm and clings to it. This isn't the dumb thing either. That's quite strange behaviour, isn't it, really?

He goes to watch Dickens perform in the play, The Frozen Deep, and he very, very ostentatiously bursts into tears and sobs the whole way through it, throwing all the actors off course. He gets a bad review and hurls himself into a flower bed sobbing and beating the beating the flower bed with his hands i'd love to see some of the danish players do that on wednesday great wouldn't it and essentially he stays for weeks and weeks he says five weeks in the end and when he goes um he he's dismissed by dickens's daughter as a bony bore dickens writes large

numbers of bitchy letters one of of them to Lord John Russell, his former prime minister, in which he claims that he complains about Hans Christian Andersen's linguistic skills. I saw that. He said he doesn't speak French, doesn't speak English, can't even write Danish.

But whether Dickens could speak Danish, I doubt. I mean, I imagine any Danish listeners will be amused at the idea of an English person insulting the Danes for their lack of linguistic ability. That's very true, yeah. I wouldn't advise any of England's players to do that on Wednesday. I think that would be very foolish.

So that's obviously a sort of... That's a great story. I mean, that's a goal for England. Yes. And actually, if things weren't going badly enough for Denmark, not long after that, just a few years after that, the Danes suffered

this sort of great trauma, don't they, of losing Schleswig-Holstein. That's all a shambles, but I'm not even going to try to redo it. Schleswig-Holstein. Is that about right?

That's right. So this is the most, one of the famously the most complicated diplomatic dilemma in European history, isn't it? And Britain could have intervened to save the Danes, but refused to. So the Duchess of Schleswig and Holstein are attached to Denmark. They're in personal union with the Danish crown, but they're not part of Denmark. They're part of the German...

Holstein is part of the German Confederation. So there's a very confusing picture. And there was a thing called the London Protocol, which had been agreed to ensure, I don't know, to ensure the sort of integrity of Denmark, but also the integrity of these other places. Nobody understood it. Lord Palmerston famously said,

only three people have ever really understood the Schleswig-Holstein business. The prince consort who is dead, the German professor who has gone mad, and I who have forgotten all about it. That's pretty much how I feel about a lot of things we talk about in this podcast. The Danes

try to make Schleswig-Holstein part of Denmark basically to sort of rationalise it all. The Prussians and the Austrians invade. There is a huge amount of hullabaloo in England. People say we should intervene to save the Danes. But it gets swallowed up, doesn't it? It does get swallowed up. Palmerston wanted to, despite saying he knew nothing, he'd forgotten all about it, he actually wanted to save the Danes. But it gets swallowed up, doesn't it? It does get swallowed up. Palmerston wanted to, despite saying he knew nothing,

he'd forgotten all about it, he actually wanted to help the Danes, to do something to help them. And Queen Victoria said no. She was too pro-German. And this is the first building block in the creation of Germany. It's the first of the three great wars that Bismarck fights. He fights the Danes, then he fights... So he's fighting progressively...

It's a bit like a tournament. He's fighting progressively tougher opponents. The Danes the austrians and then the french but you know this also it has a link with the very beginnings of this podcast because it along the the the neck of the peninsula separating denmark from germany yes is and again danish listeners will probably laugh at my pronunciation. The Danavirka. Very good. Danavirka. The Danavirka. That's Swedish. You said that in Swedish.

Yeah, I know. I'm drifting off. The great earthwork built in about, begun in about 650, continued across the early Middle Ages by legend, commissioned by the mother of uh harold bluetooth and i'm still standing there when the schleswig-holstein crisis erupts how can we you can say it so so easily well that's my master of mastery of 19th century continental history dominic and of scandinavian much to learn from clearly yeah anyway so i reckon i reckon that that has got

england up to, I think we've gone into the lead there. Do you think so? I think... So I reckon we're 3-1. Well, I think there's one more... Sorry, sorry,

3-4. I think there's one more thing we should mention, which is again a suggestion from Dan Jackson. Ah, yes.

Okay, so I reckon we've won. Right. But we want to end on a note of amity and brotherhood. Yes. And a reminder of the fact that there's a lot to celebrate. Yeah.

Denmark's a great country. I love Denmark. I've been to Denmark on holiday. I think it's an absolutely splendid country. I like it because it's like, frankly, I mean, this is a terrible indictment of me, but I like it because it's quite like England. It's also quite like the Netherlands. Yes, it is. But I think it's my wife's favourite place to go on holiday.

Is it Denmark? Yeah, she doesn't. She burns very easily, so she hates the Mediterranean. What she likes is kind of faintly drizzly places with bicycles. Yeah, good cafes. Nice brick buildings. Yeah, Netherlands and Denmark, that's our idea of heaven. That's all good. So tell us. That's their idea of heaven. That's all good.

So let's go to Dan Jackson. Yes. So Dan basically sent this picture of a memorial in Newcastle Cathedral. And the memorial reads, In memory of Danish seamen of all ranks who gave their lives in the service of their country in the years 1939 to 1945. When you read their names, remember that they died for Denmark.

They died for freedom so that we, like them, might live as free Danes. Very stirring. And the history behind that is that Denmark, when it was attacked by the Germans, it surrendered in six hours. I mean, they basically had no... 9th of April, 1940.

Exactly. They surrendered before breakfast, I mean, literally at breakfast, the Germans having attacked overnight. And all the Danish ships that could sailed to Britain and were put under Allied flags with a Danish crew. And the home of the Danish fleet was Newcastle. So Danish seamen settled in Newcastle for the duration of the war fleet was Newcastle. So Danish seamen settled in Newcastle for the duration of the war. They had Danish clubs, they had Danish church, they had a sort of part of the harbour that was called the Danish Pool.

And afterwards they opened a church in Newcastle with a kind of book of remembrance and stuff. And eventually that closed down once the Danish presence dwindled and it moved into the cathedral. But Newcastle, which of course Christian IV had claimed, had wanted in 1642, it ended up becoming a little bit of Denmark. And there is kind of a little bit of Newcastle that is a bit of Denmark

in the form of this memorial. So it's a lovely, lovely story. It is a wonderful story and I think a really good note on which to end. Because I think it has been a theme throughout these episodes that we've done on the rivalry between England and the various countries that our football team has been playing. But again and again, there's this emphasis on the way as well in which relations have been good and rich and productive as well. I think that's the right note on which to end. Even with the Scots. Even with the Scots, yes.

Right. So we will see you next time. Maybe, who knows, I hope I'm not jumping the gun, there might be a chance for one more bonus podcast before the tournament is over. Anglo-Italian relations, but that is all down to the Danes.

If the wrath of the Dane descends on the England football team as it did on Lindisfarne and on East Anglia, we will not be back with that. But if we manage to do as King Alfred did and defy the wrath of the Northmen, then hopefully we'll be back with either.

And let's hope for none of the conduct that we saw at Wilton right at the beginning of the podcast. Let's hope not. On that note, goodbye. Bye-bye. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com.

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