Niels Ebbesen
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Niels Ebbesen, died November 2, 1340, Danish squire and national hero, known for his killing of Count Gerhard III.
Little is known of Ebbesen’s background. He seems to have belonged to the Jutlandish gentry. Like many other of his class he probably supported the Holstein occupants during the years of chaos but later on he turned against them and when Count Gerhard campaigned in Jutland 1340 Ebbesen at any rate supported the Jutlandish guerrilla. The night of April 1st he and some of his warriors got into the Count’s headquarter in Randers, entered his bedroom, killed him together with some of his men and managed to escape. During the following rebellion Niels Ebbesen played a main role in the resistance but he was killed the same year during a fight against the Germans. A ballad dealing with the killing of Count Gerhard by Ebbeson is translated in Alexander Gray's Historical Ballads of Denmark (Edinburgh University Press, 1958).
Traditionally Niels Ebbesen has been regarded one of the great heroes of Danish Medieval history, the “tyrant slayer” whose action meant the beginning liberation of Denmark. Yet some also disapproved of his act regarding it as simple murder. Whether his motives were purely national or partly private is impossible to state. This has not prevented that both contemporary ballads and later romantic Danish poetry have praised him as a freedom fighter. A fictive statue representing him was erected 1882 in Randers.
As late as 1942 the dramatist Kaj Munk portrayed him in a play that was prohibited by the Germans.
References
- Dansk Biografisk Leksikon, vol. 4, Copenh. 1980.
- Politikens Danmarkshistorie, vol. 4 by Erik Kjersgaard, Copenh. 1962.
- Jyske Krønike, transl. by Rikke Agnete Olsen. Aarhus, 1995.
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