Novel
The Fall of the King
Kongens Fald
Johannes V. Jensen · 1901
Opening lines
Vejen bøjede tilvenstre over en Bro og ind gennem Serritslev By; Grøfterne laa med mørkt Græs og gule Smaablomster, ude over Markerne hvilede hist og her en hvid Blak, en Blomstertaage, i Skumringen.
The road bent to the left over a bridge and into the village of Serritslev; the ditches lay full of dark grass and small yellow flowers, and out over the fields here and there rested a white patch, a haze of blossom, in the dusk.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
Mikkel Thøgersen, a poor student, sets off for Copenhagen at the end of the fifteenth century with a few eggs as his only possession. On the way he falls in with mercenaries, among them the young nobleman Otte Iversen, whom he will envy. He fails his studies, enlists, roams Europe, comes back. Years later, he enters the service of King Christian II, whose shadow he becomes, from the Stockholm bloodbath to the reverses of the reign.
Context
The work appears in three parts, Foraarets Død and Den store Sommer in 1900, Vinteren in 1901, and covers the years 1497 to 1536 or so, from the defeat at Dithmarschen to the Count's War. Its language is deliberately archaising. A painting by Carl Bloch showing the captive king walking round a table nourished the book, and one chapter closely follows the old ballad of Aage and Else. Translated into English in 1933 and then by Alan G. Bower, it appeared in French at Actes Sud in 1990.
Who it is for
About three hundred pages, in a rough, elliptical language. Know before opening it that the hero is not the king but the student who follows him.
Prizes and reception
Voted in 1999 the best Danish novel of the twentieth century by the readers of Politiken and Berlingske, and included in 2006 in the country's cultural canon.
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