The Strange Cult of Queen Dagmar

In 1205, the Danish king Valdemar II married a Bohemian princess, known in her new country as Dagmar. Little contemporary information exists concerning this queen, who died only seven years after her arrival. Nonetheless, Dagmar is one of very few figures from medieval Danish history whose names are familiar to a general Danish public in the present. Over the centuries, a narrative of her life has emerged, based largely on a group of ballad texts first written down in the sixteenth century, that Queen Dagmar was so exceptionally beautiful and kind that Danes (particularly common people) remained devoted to her memory through the generations. Moreover, several texts, and a remarkable early twentieth-century painting in St Bendt’s Church in Ringsted posit her as an intercessor on behalf of Denmark, in ways that come very close to portraying her as a saint, so much that one twentieth-century ballad scholar concludes that the Benedictine monks of Ringsted launched a canonization process on her behalf. This article investigates the image of Queen Dagmar as it has developed over the centuries with a particular eye toward implications or claims of sanctity, toward Dagmar’s purported role as an intercessor during and after her lifetime, and her perceived (and at times seemingly prescribed) role in the constitution of Danish identity.