214	NORDIC BALLADS
to have arisen midway between these two dates. To carry the
Danish 'viser' back to the twelfth century is something not beyond
a doubt. Those purporting to relate twelfth-century events are
somewhat novelistic, and the facts cannot be ascertained without
peradventure. Yet the ballads are relatively numerous. They begin
before the accession of Valdernar I, with Erik Emun and Sorte Plog
(DGF 116). Sorte Plog murders the king to avenge his brother;
the details are not as in Saxo, and another authority supposes
that Sorte Plog was avenging his father. The Sir Stig Hvide who
perished at Viborg in 1151 (DGF 117) is probably the same person
as the Sir Stig Hvide who enchanted with his runes Rigisse,
a king's sister (DGF 76, Bergstrom 46). In so far as it concerns
rune-casting the ballad belongs to the supernatural group; the
description of Sir Stig's palace, which is all that the Swedes have
remembered of this tradition, is a set-piece of baronial magnificence,
like the description of Digenis Akritas's paradise on the Euphrates.
Then when they came to little Stig's port,
there played a hind and danced a hart,
So joyfully.
Then when they came Stig's gate within,
there played a hart and danced a hind.
Then when they came within the hall,
the gleam of gold was over all.
The roof it was with gold bedight,
the floor was spread with brass so bright.
The oven was of marble-stone
and all the walls of elfin-bone.
The board and stools of reddest gold,
but the tablecloth of acre's wool.
So joyfully.	(Bergstrom 46.)
In Saxo, as we have seen, there is almost a contemporary reference
to the ballad of Svend Grade (DGF 118); a quotation would have
clinched the proof. Valdemar I is remembered for his domestic
misfortunes, which may be mostly imaginary. The role of a jealous
wife is given to Queen Sophia, who is alleged to have burned the
paramour Tove (DGF 121, 122, Bergstrom 43) in a bath house,
to have embroiled Valdemar with his sister * Little' Christine
(DGF 126), and to have perished in a similar attempt to ruin her
daughter (DGF 127). As to the truth of all this, one cannot say
more than that Valdemar had an illegitimate son named Kristoffer,