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During the First World War (1914–1918), Denmark maintained its neutrality. The position of neutrality was agreed to by all the major political parties. [1] Denmark maintained trade with both sides of the war, and was among several neutral countries that exported canned meat to the German army. Danish speculators made fortunes on canned meat ...
After 1814, when Norway was ceded to Sweden following the Napoleonic Wars, Denmark retained what remained of Norway's great medieval colonial holdings. Today, the only remaining vestiges are two originally Norwegian dependencies that are currently within the Danish Realm , the Faroe Islands and Greenland ; the Faroes were a Danish county until 1948, while Greenland's colonial status ceased in ...
- Prehistoric Denmark
- Middle Ages
- Early Modern Denmark
- 19th Century
- 20th Century
- 21st Century
- See Also
- Footnotes
- Further Reading
- External Links
The Scandinavian region has a rich prehistory, having been populated by several prehistoric cultures and people for about 12,000 years, since the end of the last ice age. During the ice age, all of Scandinavia was covered by glaciers most of the time, except for the southwestern parts of what we now know as Denmark. When the ice began retreating, t...
Earliest literary sources
In his description of Scandza (from the 6th-century work, Getica), the ancient writer Jordanes says that the Dani were of the same stock as the Suetidi (Swedes, Suithiod?) and expelled the Heruliand took their lands. The Old English poems Widsith and Beowulf, as well as works by later Scandinavian writers — notably by Saxo Grammaticus(c. 1200) — provide some of the earliest references to Danes.
Viking Age
With the beginning of the Viking Age in the 9th century, the prehistoric period in Denmark ends. The Danish people were among those known as Vikings, during the 8th–11th centuries. Viking explorers first discovered and settled in Iceland in the 9th century, on their way from the Faroe Islands. From there, Greenland and Vinland (probably Newfoundland) were also settled. Utilizing their great skills in shipbuilding and navigation they raided and conquered parts of France and the British Isles....
Christianity, expansion and the establishment of the Kingdom of Denmark
The history of Christianity in Denmark overlaps with that of the Viking Age. Various petty kingdoms existed throughout the area now known as Denmark for many years. Between c. 960 and the early 980s, Harald Bluetooth appears to have established a kingdom in the lands of the Danes which stretched from Jutland to Skåne. Around the same time, he received a visit from a German missionary who, according to legend, survived an ordeal by fire, which convinced Harald to convert to Christianity. Sweyn...
The Reformation
The Reformation, which originated in the German lands in the early 16th century from the ideas of Martin Luther (1483–1546), had a considerable impact on Denmark. The Danish Reformation started in the mid-1520s. Some Danes wanted access to the Bible in their own language. In 1524 Hans Mikkelsen and Christiern Pedersen translated the New Testamentinto Danish; it became an instant best-seller. Those who had traveled to Wittenberg in Saxony and come under the influence of the teachings of Luther...
The loss of Eastern Denmark
The Dano-Norwegian Kingdom grew wealthy during the 16th century, largely because of the increased traffic through the Øresund, which Danes could tax because Denmark controlled both sides of the Sound. The trade in grain exports from Poland to the Netherlandsand to the rest of Europe grew enormously at this time, and the Danish kings did not hesitate to cash in on it. The Sound duty was only repealed in the 1840s. The Danish economy benefited from the Eighty Years' War (1568–1648) in the Nethe...
Absolutism
As a result of the disaster in the war against Sweden, King Frederick III (reigned 1648–1670) succeeded in convincing the nobles to give up some of their powers and their exemption from taxes, leading to the era of absolutism in Denmark. The country's main objective in the following decades was the recovery of its lost provinces from Sweden. In the 1670s, Denmark–Norway had regained enough strength to start a war with Sweden to recover its lost provinces. However, in spite of Denmark's outsid...
The Napoleonic Wars
The long decades of peace came to an abrupt end during the Napoleonic Wars. Britain felt threatened by the Armed Neutrality Treaty of 1794, which originally involved Denmark and Sweden, and later Prussia and Russia. The British fleet attacked Copenhagen in 1801, destroying much of Denmark's navy. Denmark nonetheless managed to remain largely uninvolved in the Napoleonic Wars until 1807. The British fleet bombarded Copenhagen again that year, causing considerable destruction to the city. They...
Nationalism and liberalism
The Danish liberal and national movements gained momentum in the 1830s, and after the European revolutions of 1848 Denmark became a constitutional monarchy on 5 June 1849. The growing bourgeoisie had demanded a share in government, and in an attempt to avert the sort of bloody revolution occurring elsewhere in Europe, Frederick VII gave in to the demands of the citizens. A new constitution emerged, separating the powers and granting the franchise to all adult males, as well as freedom of the...
Industrialisation
Industrialisationcame to Denmark in the second half of the 19th century. The nation's first railroads were constructed in the 1850s, and improved communications and overseas trade allowed industry to develop in spite of Denmark's lack of natural resources. Trade unions developed starting in the 1870s. There was a considerable migration of people from the countryside to the cities. Danish agriculture became centered around the export of dairy and meat products, especially to Great Britain. Ins...
1901–1939
In the early decades of the 20th century the new Radical Party and the older Venstre Party shared government. During this time women gained the right to vote (1915), and the United States purchased some of Denmark's colonial holdings: the three islands of St. John, St. Croix, and St. Thomas in the West Indies. The period also saw Denmark inaugurating important social and labour-market reforms, laying the basis for the present[update] welfare state. Denmark remained neutral during World War I,...
Second World War
In 1939, Hitler offered nonaggression pacts to the Scandinavian nations. While Sweden and Norway refused, Denmark readily accepted. When WWII began that fall, Copenhagen declared its neutrality. Nevertheless, Germany (so as to secure communications for its invasion of Norway) occupied Denmark on 9 April 1940, meeting limited resistance. British forces, however, occupied the Faroe Islands (12 April 1940) and invaded Iceland (10 May 1940) in pre-emptive moves to prevent German occupation. Follo...
Post-war
In 1948, Denmark granted home rule to the Faroe Islands. 1953 saw further political reform in Denmark, abolishing the Landsting (the elected upper house), colonial status for Greenlandand allowing female rights of succession to the throne with the signing of a new constitution. Although not one of the war-time United Nations, Denmark succeeded in obtaining a (belated) invitation to the UN Charter conference, and became a founding member of the United Nations organisation in 1945. With the Sov...
Denmark went through some of its most serious post-war crises in the early 21st century, such as the SARS outbreak in 2003, Indian Ocean tsunami in December 2004, Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy in 2005, Danish embassy bombing in Islamabad in 2008, Copenhagen attacks in 2015, and with theCOVID-19 pandemic (including Deltacronhybrid va...
Logan, F. Donald (2005). The Vikings in History. New York: Routledge (Taylor & Francis). p. 205. ISBN 9780415327565. Archived from the original on 23 April 2023. Retrieved 26 January 2023.(third ed...
Bain, R. Nisbet. Scandinavia: A Political History of Denmark, Norway and Sweden from 1513 to 1900 (2014) onlineBagge, Sverre. Cross and Scepter: The Rise of the Scandinavian Kingdoms From the Vikings to the Reformation(Princeton University Press; 2014) 325 pages;Barton, H. Arnold. Scandinavia in the Revolutionary Era 1760–1815, University of Minnesota Press, 1986. ISBN 0-8166-1392-3.Birch J. H. S. Denmark In History (1938) onlineWith its economy highly reliant on Great Britain, Germany and other European nations, Denmark had to navigate between the two belligerent blocks during the war. This combined with shortages and inflationary pressures lead to a massive growth in state intervention in the economic and social spheres. During the war, class divisions widened but government policies kept destitution (and left-wing ...
Denmark in the world war era. 1. Denmark in the world war era. From 1914, the European continent was shaken by two world wars, recurring economic crises, political instability and a widespread feeling that the old Western order was in crisis. The Decline of the West, written by German thinker Oswald Spengler in the shadow of the First World War ...
The International Encyclopedia of the First World War (WW1) is a collaborative international research project designed to develop a virtual English-language reference work on the First World War.
Danish Colonies. Like other European seafaring nations Denmark engaged in establishing trading stations and colonies in different parts of the world from the 17th century onwards. Geographically they were located in the northern Atlantic, the southern Atlantic and in Asia. In the northern atlantic they included Greenland, Iceland and the Faeroe ...
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