Some years ago, after the unveiling of Gutzon’s statue of Woodrow Wilson in Poznan, he took his wife and two children on a flying visit to Denmark. They arrived in Copenhagen about 8:00 A.M., and by 8:15 Gutzon was a sensation. He was a great sculptor by that time, and he had an international reputation. But the baggage carriers, the cabdrivers and the early passers-by did not know that. He was interesting to them only because he spoke to them unhesitatingly in archaic Danish, the Danish of a hundred years ago. “I learned it at my mother’s knee,” he explains, “and she had learned it in her youth, now a century past.” He was linguistically one with the Danes of 1800. The romantic swashbucklers of crusading times no longer seemed quite so close to him. The King of Denmark saw the Borglums after their return from Borglum Kloster and “the black duneland of the North.” He sent his chamberlain to the hotel with an invitation because Gutzon, fifteen years before, had made a three-quarter bust of the king’s grandfather. It was proudly displayed on a gilt mantel. “Is it a good portrait?” asked the sculptor. The king smiled. “Yes, it is,” he said. “It is a good portrait with just a touch of American vigor.” His Majesty then presented Gutzon with the Order of the Knights of Danenborg. “Interesting,” the king said as he draped the ribbon about Borglum’s neck, “to think that your people killed one of our kings.” “I had heard of some disturbance in the old days at Borglum Kloster,” Borglum said. “There was violence....” “That was it. The king was seized. They took him to a prison and a week later they hanged him. But you, of course, hadn’t much to do with that.” “No,” admitted Borglum, “I hadn’t. I don’t know what to say.” The king smiled again. “I’ll forgive you,” he said. “You know, Borglum, your people, the Jutlanders, may be said to have saved Denmark. They were the only ones the Swedes could not defeat.” “That makes me feel better,” declared Gutzon. But the king seemed not to have heard him. “Yes,” His Majesty went on, “the Swedes took virtually all the country. They overran the villages and cities. They captured Copenhagen. They took everything valuable. But, of course, they never took Jutland. That’s where your people were.” * * * * * The financial situation in Denmark in the middle of the nineteenth century was what caused James Borglum, Gutzon’s father, to come to the United States. The markets were bad, the crop yield had been none too good and there was discontent in the family over the probable division of what little would be left of Grandfather Borglum’s estate.