chronicler says about him that "he was in many ways a serviceable man and put many things right that were wrong." His godson and nephew, Didrik Pining the Younger, succeeded him in 1490, and was governor for the two following years. Pining, together with Hans Pothorst, patrolled North Atlantic waters and played prominent roles in the Anglo-Danish Naval War (1484–90). Around 1484, he captured, off the coast of England or Brittany and in the Spanish Sea, three Spanish or Portuguese ships which he brought to King John of Denmark in Copenhagen. He accompanied John to Bergen in 1486 as admiral of the royal fleet. In 1487, he led a fleet to the island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea, and secured it for Denmark. In a treaty concluded between John of Denmark and the Dutch in 1490, it is, however, expressly stated that Didrik Pining (and another admiral named Bartold Busch) were to be excluded from the peace. He was then also spoken of as a lord of Iceland. In the same year, Pining was appointed governor of Vardøhus, and may thus have been commander-in-chief of the seas and lands in northern waters. Didrik Pining likely died (was possibly killed) around Finnmark or the North Cape in 1491. In the Skibby Chronicle, Pining (and Pothorst) are mentioned among many pirates who "met with a miserable death, being either slain by their friends or hanged on the gallows or drowned in the waves of the sea," although this has been disputed by some modern historians. Later references In a letter to Christian III of Denmark in 1551, the mayor of Kiel, Carsten Griep, sent the king two maps of the north Atlantic made during the expeditions of Pining and Pothorst, "who were sent out by your majesty's royal grandfather King Christian the First, at the request of his majesty of Portugal, with certain ships to explore new countries and islands in the north, have raised on the rock Wydthszerck, lying off Greenland and towards Sniefeldsiekel in Iceland on the sea, a great sea-mark on account of the Greenland pirates (presumably Inuit)." Olaus Magnus wrote in 1555 that Pining and Pothorst, due to their piracy, had "by the Nordic kings been excluded from all human contact and declared outlaws, as a result of their extremely violent robberies and numerous cruel acts against all sailors that they could catch, whether close or distant."