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If he did not, he would certainly be committing a sin. He did not know what to do. "Name him," said they, and Valdemar told them it was the bishop of Roskilde. At that the old archbishop got up and insisted on the election then and there; but Absalon would have none of it. The burden was too heavy for his shoulders, he said.
His sorrow laid Absalon on a long and grievous sick-bed, from which he rose only when Valdemar's son needed and called him. In the fifteen years that follow we see his old warlike spirit still unbroken. Thus his defiance of the German Emperor, whose anger was hot. Frederick, in revenge, persuaded the Pomeranian duke Bugislav to organize a raid on Denmark with a fleet of five hundred sail.
That much was saved, and Absalon lived long enough to fling back, as the counsellor of Valdemar's son, from behind the stout wall he built at Denmark's southern gate, the Emperor's demand for homage, with the reply that "the King ruled in Denmark with the same right as the Emperor in Germany, and was no man's subject."
And Absalon reached far beyond the boundaries of little Denmark to every people that speaks the English tongue.
Absalon marshalled his eighteen house-carles and such of the country-folk as he could, and fell upon the Wends, routing them utterly. A bare handful escaped, the rest were killed, while the bishop lost but a single man.
Despite his struggles, Absalon was dragged to the high seat, but as they were about to force him into it, he asked leave to say a single word, and instantly appealed his case to the Pope.
Moreover, a man told Absalon that he had seen a beam found in the spot, which a countryman struck with his ploughshare as he burrowed into the clods. Hakon, the son of Hamund, heard of this; but when he was seen to be on the point of turning his arms from the Irish against the Danes in order to avenge his brother, Hakon the Zealander, the son of Wigar, and Starkad deserted him.
On the way over, the King, listening to their doubts and fears, turned back himself once, but Absalon, who always led in the attack and was the last on the homeward run, overtook him and gave him the talking to be deserved.
But a number of Saxos present themselves in the same surroundings with whom he has been from time to time identified. All he tells us himself is, that Absalon, Archbishop of Lund from 1179 to 1201, pressed him, who was "the least of his companions, since all the rest refused the task", to write the history of Denmark, so that it might record its glories like other nations.
Scarce a year passed that did not see one or more of these crusades. Absalon preached them all, and his ship was ever first in landing. In battle he and the King fought shoulder to shoulder. In the spring of 1169, he had at last his wish: the heathen idols were destroyed and their temples burned.
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