kingdom in his many long absences.

Thyra needed ability and resolution to fitly perform this duty, for those
were restless and turbulent times, and the Germans made many incursions
into Sleswick and Jutland and turned the borderlands on the Eyder into a
desert. This grew so hard to bear that the wise queen devised a plan to
prevent it. Gathering a great body of workmen from all parts of Denmark,
she set them to building a wall of defense from forty-five to
seventy-five feet high and eight miles long, crossing from water to water
on the east and west. This great wall, since known as the Dannevirke,
took three years to build. There were strong watch-towers at intervals
and only one gate, and this was well protected by a wide and deep ditch,
crossed by a bridge that could readily be removed.

For ages afterwards the Danes were grateful to Queen Thyra for this
splendid wall of defense and sang her praises in their national hymns,
while they told wonderful tales of her cleverness in ruling the land
while her husband was far away. Fragments of Thyra's rampart still remain
and its remains formed the groundwork of all the later border bulwarks of
Denmark.

Queen Thyra, while a worshipper of the northern gods, showed much favor
to the Christians and caused some of her children to be signed with the
cross. But King Gorm was a fierce pagan and treated his Christian
subjects so cruelly that he gained the name of the "Church's worm," being
regarded as one who was constantly gnawing at the supports of the Church.
Henry I. the Fowler, the great German emperor of that age, angry at this
treatment of the Christians, sent word to Gorm that it must cease, and
when he found that no heed was paid to his words he marched a large army
to the Eyder, giving Gorm to understand that he must mend his ways or his
kingdom would be overrun.

Gorm evidently feared the loss of his dominion, for from that time on he
allowed the Archbishop of Bremen to preach in his dominions and to
rebuild the churches which had been destroyed, while he permitted his son
Harald, who favored the Christians, to be signed with the cross. But he
kept to the faith of his forefathers, as did his son Knud, known as
"Dan-Ast," or the "Danes'-joy."

The ancient sagas tell us that there was little love between Knud and
Harald; and that Gorm, fearing ill results from this, swore an oath that
he would put to death any one who attempted to kill his first-born son,
or who shoul