Anne of Denmark and her African servants
Anne of Denmark (1574–1619) was the wife of James VI and I, King of Scotland, and King of England after the Union of Crowns. Several recent scholars prefer to spell her name "Anna" in accordance with most examples of her signature. In 1617, she was depicted in a painting by Paul van Somer with an African servant holding her horse at Oatlands Palace. There are archival records of Africans or people of African descent, often called "Moors" or "Moirs", in her service.<ref>See, [https://dsl.ac.uk/entry/dost/more_n 'Mor(e), Moir', Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue]</ref> One of the first publications to mention Anne of Denmark's "Moir" in Scotland was edited by James Thomson Gibson-Craig in 1828. Norway and Denmark James VI sailed to Norway to meet Anne of Denmark in October 1589. 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. Some of the dancers died from the cold.Kim F. Hall, Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England (Cornell University Press, 1996), p. 128. The surviving performers remained with the royal party in their