James VI sailed to Norway to meet Anne of Denmark in October 1589.Ethel Carleton Williams, Anne of Denmark (London, 1970), pp. 20, 207 fn. 20. John Allyne Gade, a biographer of the queen's brother Christian IV of Denmark, writing in 1927 included a detail of the couple seeing a dance performed by African men in the snow at Oslo.Imtiaz Habib, Black Lives in the English Archives, 1500–1677: Imprints of the Invisible (Routledge, 2008), pp. 230, 316. Some of the dancers died from the cold.John Gade, Christian IV, King of Denmark and Norway (Boston, 1927), pp. 39-40.Kim F. Hall, Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England (Cornell University Press, 1996), p. 128.Ethel C. Williams, Anne of Denmark (London: Longman, 1970), p. 21. The surviving performers remained with the royal party in their journey to Denmark and came to Scotland. The source of Gade's story is unknown.Sujata Iyengar, Shades of Difference: Mythologies of Skin Color in Early Modern England (Philadelphia, 2005), p. 82: David Stevenson, Scotland's Last Royal Wedding: The Marriage of James VI and Anne of Denmark (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1997), p. 128 fn. 12: Clare McManus, Women on the Renaissance stage: Anna of Denmark and Female Masquing in the Stuart Court, 1590-1619 (Manchester, 2002), p. 76. It is known that the newly-weds were entertained in Oslo by acrobats, recorded as two "vautis". The "vautis" performed again, in the "close" or courtyard of a Danish palace.Miles Kerr-Peterson & Michael Pearce, 'James VI's English Subsidy and Danish Dowry Accounts', Scottish History Society Miscellany XVI (Woodbridge, 2020), p. 51, British Library Add. MS 22,958 f.12r-v., 'gevin to the two vautis that fansit in the cloiss'; 'And of sex scoir daleris to the tua vautis that was in Upslo'.
