The 9th-century kings of the Danes — Godfred, Hemming, and the two Horiks — who resisted Charlemagne, fortified the Danevirke, and ruled Denmark at the dawn of the Viking Age.
The Danish kings of the ninth century are the first rulers of Denmark to appear clearly in the written record, almost entirely through Frankish sources — above all the Royal Frankish Annals and Rimbert’s Life of Ansgar. They ruled a kingdom centred on Jutland and the Danish isles, with the great trading town of Hedeby and the frontier rampart of the Danevirke as its southern anchors.
The dynasty’s power rested on control of the Jutland peninsula and the sea-lanes of the western Baltic, and on the ability to muster fleets — the same maritime strength that would soon carry Danish raiders deep into the Frankish and English worlds.
King Godfred is the first of the line to loom large in the sources. Alarmed by Charlemagne’s conquest of the neighbouring Saxons, around 808 he strengthened the Danevirke, sacked the Slavic trading town of Reric and moved its merchants to Hedeby, and threatened Frisia; he was murdered by one of his own followers in 810 before a full war with the empire came. His successor Hemming quickly made terms, and the Treaty of Heiligen in 811 fixed the River Eider as the border between the Danes and the Frankish empire.
Godfred’s aggression and Hemming’s diplomacy set the pattern for the century: the Danish kings were strong enough to defy the Carolingians on the frontier, but preferred a fortified border to open war with the greatest power in the West.
After a decade of succession struggles, Horik I emerged as sole king and reigned for some forty years. His reign coincided with the first great Viking raids on Francia: a Danish fleet sacked Hamburg in 845, and Horik alternately disavowed and profited from such expeditions while negotiating with the Frankish emperors and permitting the missionary Ansgar to build churches at Hedeby and Ribe. In 854 a dynastic war destroyed most of the royal kin, and Horik I was killed.
Horik II, a young kinsman, survived the slaughter and succeeded him, maintaining the toleration of Ansgar’s mission. After his reign the ninth-century royal line fades from the record, giving way in time to the dynasty of Jelling that would unite and Christianise Denmark under Gorm and Harald Bluetooth.