Toko (legendary figure)

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Toko (Latinization of the name Toki ) is a figure in the Gesta Danorum of the Saxo Grammaticus (around 1200).

Toko is a boastful supporter of King Harald Blauzahn , who, drunk by his accuracy with a bow and arrow, claims that he could hit a small apple placed on a wooden stake with the first shot.

Toko had created many envious people through his eagerness to serve, who told the king about the drunken boasting. Toko is then forced by the king to shoot the apple from his son's head instead of a wooden stake ( apple shot ). If he didn't hit the apple with the first shot, he would lose his own life too. Before the apple is shot, Toko does not take one but three arrows from his quiver. The apple shot succeeds after the boy is admonished not to move and stands up with his face turned away so that he is not frightened by the approaching arrow.

When asked why he had several arrows ready, Toko replied that he wanted to kill the king if he missed a shot.

He was not punished any further by the king, but soon afterwards he boasted that he was just as skilful as the king in the Finns' art of moving around on the snow, and had to prove his skills again under life-threatening conditions and master the descent from Kullaberg (a rocky peninsula near Mölle in Skåne ). He is saved by the fact that his skis break at the right moment so that he falls happily and can conquer the last part of the slope on foot, otherwise he would have threatened that he would have driven into the icy sea at full speed and drowned there.

He is taken in by boatmen and his happy survival earns the king an even worse reputation. Toko now avoids Harald's further allegiance and enters the service of his son Sven Gabelbart .

In Sven's uprising against his father when a peace was to be negotiated after a fight near Mols in Jutland, Harald went into a forest and was ambushed with an arrow by Toko, who wanted to take revenge for the unjust treatment when he was sitting in a bush in "for emptying the bowel". The wounded Harald is brought to Wolin ( Jomsburg ) and dies there.

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  • Gesta Danorum ed. J. Olrik et H. Ræder (1931), 10.7 , 10.8
  • Paul Herrmann, Explanatory Notes on the First Nine Books of the Danish History of the Saxo Grammaticus (1901), 436–439.