Abstract
Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size SummaryWhen posterity has tried to explain the presence of the two Wild Men as supporters of the Royal Danish coat of arms who appear for the first time in Christiern I's seal of 1449, the proposals always have been based on nowadays imagination of what the notion »Wild Men« meant to people in the Middle Ages: rustic, wild, demoniacal, violent, aggressive, hirsute primitives of giant height and strength, leading a brutish life in the woodlands.My analyses of some representations of Wild Men in manuscripts, woodcuts and engravings from the time of the mentioned king expose, however, quite another image of the Wild Men: a quiet, good-natured, peaceable and peaceful people living an admirable family life in very charming landscapes. In fact, the latest studies of the conception of Wild Men in the Middle Ages have revealed that during the fourteenth century the views on these mythical creatures changed: they lost their aura of fear and terror in favour of open envy and even admiration. The two currents, the »mythical« and the »fictitious«, seem to have existed in art side by side for several generations.I propose that this change perhaps is to be seen in relation to the representations of the life of Adam and Eve after the Fall of Man shown in miniature paintings in the many medieval copies of the popular treatise Speculum humanae salvationis.My conclusion is that the Wild Men supporters of the Royal Danish arms are to be interpreted from the fictitious point of view of the Late Middle Ages, and that they may symbolize – most probably – the kings' descendance from the very first inhabitants of Denmark when the country was still No Man's Land.Minna Heimbürger dr.phil.E-mail: minna.heimburger@gmail.com
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