Dear Mrs. Higginson,

I am a Danish Army Major currently assigned to the British Headquarters 19 Mechanized Brigade located in and around Basra in southern Iraq.  Now, as everywhere else in this world when people get together, some of the downtime is spent discussing hobbies, and I have had many a good discussion about horses with some brilliant cavalry officers of the British Army.  We have also had the good fortune to have in circulation your excellent magazine HORSE&HOUND. Referring to HORSE&HOUND dated 31 July 2003 I should like to correct a seemingly insignificant mistake or error occurring in the article on page 4: “Suffolk stud hangs in balance”.  My aim is not to discredit the endangered Suffolk Punches, on the contrary, I know perfectly well what it means to work with a breed of horses that is or has been on the brink of extinction, as I in Denmark have a stud farm where my wife and I breed the Knabstruppers. In your article about the Suffolk Punch you write: “…Suffolks have the longest unbroken written pedigree of any breed, dating back to 1768…”. This is not so I am afraid to say. You are of course excused as not many people have seen or even heard of the Danish Knabstrupper of which there are only around 600 breeding stock in existence worldwide.

Therefore I would like to take the opportunity to, very shortly, tell a little part of the story of The Danish Knabstrupper, the unique world famous but very rare Danish spotted high school dressage horse of nobles and kings, bred to perfection through the centuries. The breed is used not only for leisure and hobby riding but also for the most advanced equestrian disciplines including dressage, eventing, show jumping hunting, pentathlon, and the airs above the ground.

“About 20.000 years ago, after the ice age, the Cro-Magnons were hunting in the area today known as southern France. The cave paintings made by these hunters still exist today in the caves of Lascaux and Pêche Merle. These paintings prove that the white colour has not developed through domestication, as previously thought, but instead belong to the primeval colours. The paintings prove that the genetic codes for spotted colour patterns were present in the primeval horse and, through migration, were spread all over the world. When the horse was domesticated several thousand years later the genetic codes for spots were still present and could be strengthened through selective breeding.

Denmark, the oldest kingdom in the world, is by tradition a seafaring nation thanks not least to the Vikings. Not only were the Vikings capable seafarers, but they were also considered to be excellent horsemen. Thus the Norman descendants of the Vikings won the battle of Hastings due to a highly trained cavalry, which could only have been developed by people who prepared their horses through education and selective breeding. In the 12^th century a French priest wrote to the French king that …the Danes have at their disposal an outstanding population of horses that surpasses anything he has hitherto seen... In the church of Skibby not far from Knabstrup Hovedgaard is a frieze of murals showing three young princes riding spotted horses. These murals are entitled “Memento Mori” (remember death) and thus tells us that secular decadence will be punished in the afterworld. It further tells us that spotted horses expressed decadence, wealth, arrogance and joie de vivre.

When the reformation came to Denmark in 1536 the nobles` estates fell to the crown and king Frederik II founded the royal stud at Frederiksborg. During the reign of his son, King Christian IV, a hitherto unseen splendour was displayed at the royal court, which required correspondingly magnificent horses. In 1662 king Christian V spent a long period at the court of the sun-king Ludwig IV as the court of Versailles was his great example. Ludwig IV had a great passion for spotted horses and was often depicted mounted on such horses. The spotted horse was the quintessence of the time, and thus should not be absent from the Danish court either. Purchasers from all over the world came to the yearly auctions at Frederiksborg. The carriages of the Russian Czar were harnessed with Danish white born horses, and at the auction in 1771 the white born stallion Pluto was sold to Austria and became the oldest of the ancestors of the famous Lippizaner.

In 1683, Superbe, a black stallion, was bought by the Danish state stud at Frederiksborg Castle from a Spanish monastery cum stud in Xeres de la Frontera with the aim of improving the breeding of the classical high school Frederiksborger horse. Here he founded the nucleus of the line that eventually led to the Danish Knabstrupper.

In 1812 a direct descendant of Superbe covered the Flæbe mare, brought to Denmark from Cordoba during the Napoleonic wars and subsequently acquired by Major Villars Lunn at the estate of Knabstrup Hovedgaard. Thus, when the ensuing foal, named the Flæbe stallion, was born in 1813, the Flæbe mare became the ancestress of the Knabstrupper breed. The Flæbe mare had so many colours that she was jokingly referred to as “green”.

Thus the Knabstruppers of today almost all descend in a direct line from the stallion Superbe through one of three stallion lines: The Silverking, Hermolin and Hugin lines.