ABSTRACT
Naval hero Tordenskjold died in a sword duel. He spiked the Swedish cannon with cunning and took Marstrand. Tordenskjold won the battle of Dynekil. When still a boy, his father forced him to wear a pair of lederhosen. Peder Wessel—as he was called before he became a hero—always wore out the seat of his trousers. A stop had now been put to that. There were other children in the family and trousers cost money. But this did not stop the lad. He sat athwart a grindstone and asked a group of other scamps to turn it. In the end the inevitable occurred. He wore a hole in his trousers. The way his father looked when the boy presented him with hole-ridden lederhosen has not been recorded. Nor the way his mother looked at the time. But Peder Wessel from then on wore ordinary clothes right up to the time he became a hero. Then he appeared in uniform and adopted his new name.
