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The holy city of the Wends, Arcona, stood on a steep cliff, inaccessible save from the west, where a wall a hundred feet high defended it. While the sacred banner Stanitza waved over it the Danes might burn and kill, but the power of Svantevit was unbroken. Svantevit was the god of gods in whose presence his own priests dared not so much as breathe.
"He fell with so great a noise that it was a wonder," says Saxo, naïvely; "and in the same moment the fiend ran out of the temple in a black shape with such speed that no eye could follow him or see where he went." Svantevit was dragged out of the town and chopped into bits. That night he fed the fires of the camp.
The city was allowed to surrender and the people were spared, but Svantevit and his temple were destroyed. A great crowd of his followers had gathered to see him crush his enemies at the last, and Absalon cautioned the men who cut the idol down to be careful that he did not fall on them and so seem to justify their hopes.
When they had to, they must go to the door and breathe in the open, a good enough plan if Saxo's disgust at the filth of the Wendish homes was justified. Svantevit was a horrid monster with four heads, and girt about with a huge sword. Up till then the Christian arms had always been stayed at his door, but this time the King laid siege to Arcona, determined to make an end of him.
They delivered the temple treasure into the hands of the King seven chests filled with money and valuables, among them a silver cup which the wretched King Svend had sent to Svantevit as a bribe to the Wends for joining him against his own country and kin. But those days were ended.
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