Abstract: Andreas Hjort Møller: “The Opening of the Barrow – From Rococo Medievalism in Johann Elias Schlegel’s Canut to Viking Romanticism in Johannes Ewald’s Rolf Krage”
 This article demonstrates how the representation of the Middle Ages changes from the picture of a barbaric period into the vision of a glorified past. Johann Elias Schlegel adapted a passage from Saxo’s Gesta Danorum for his 1746 play King Canute, which influenced Johannes Ewald’s widely read 1770 Saxonian play Rolf Krage. Both plays were highly popular in their time. Schlegel portrays the Middle Ages as a stark contrast to the absolutist Enlightenment ideals of his own time, whereas Ewald embraces the heathen Middle Ages as world in its own right, in which the author explores the human condition in all its aspects.