Havelok the Dane

Havelok the Dane is one of the finest Middle English romances, composed around 1285–1310 in the East Midlands dialect, and its hero belongs to Lincolnshire as much as to Denmark. The story begins with two usurpations: in Denmark, where the infant prince Havelok is saved from murder by the fisherman Grim, and in England, where the infant princess Goldborough is wrongfully kept from her throne.

Grim sails to England and founds the town of Grimsby — the poem's etymological claim — where Havelok grows up enormous, strong, and utterly unaware of his origins. He is eventually married off to the disguised Goldborough by her corrupt guardian, who thinks it a humiliation. But at night Goldborough sees a miraculous flame issuing from her sleeping husband's mouth, and a voice tells her he is a king's son. A birthmark — a golden cross on his shoulder — confirms it.

What follows is a double-quest to reclaim both thrones, which Havelok accomplishes through raw strength and political acumen. The romance was enormously popular, and Grimsby celebrated the connection: its civic arms still show the three characters of the story — Grim, Havelok, and Goldborough — preserving a twelve-hundred-year-old piece of local legend in heraldry.