Europe · The early medieval west
Kingdom of Denmark
drawn on the map AD 936–1017, 1056–1401
Danish Kongeriget Danmark. The Danish monarchy is among Europe's oldest. The Jelling stones are its "birth certificate": the smaller stone, raised by Gorm the Old c. 950, carries the oldest written reference to Denmark as a polity, its inscription reading (per UNESCO, site 697) "King Gorm made this monument to his wife Thyra, Denmark's ornament"; the larger stone, raised c. 965 by Harald Bluetooth, reads "King Harald bade this monument be made in memory of Gorm his father and Thyra his mother, that Harald who won for himself all Denmark and Norway and made the Danes Christians"—dating the conversion of the Danes to between 953 and 965.
- Shown on the map
- AD 936–1017, 1056–1401 (2 periods)
- Peak area
- 164k km²
- Region
- Europe
Overview
Danish Kongeriget Danmark. The Danish monarchy is among Europe's oldest. The Jelling stones are its "birth certificate": the smaller stone, raised by Gorm the Old c. 950, carries the oldest written reference to Denmark as a polity, its inscription reading (per UNESCO, site 697) "King Gorm made this monument to his wife Thyra, Denmark's ornament"; the larger stone, raised c. 965 by Harald Bluetooth, reads "King Harald bade this monument be made in memory of Gorm his father and Thyra his mother, that Harald who won for himself all Denmark and Norway and made the Danes Christians"—dating the conversion of the Danes to between 953 and 965. Harald's son Sweyn Forkbeard and grandson Cnut the Great built a North Sea Empire (England, Denmark, Norway) in the early 11th century. Denmark led the Kalmar Union (1397). The Reformation was established in 1536 (Christian III), creating a Lutheran state church. Royal absolutism was introduced in 1660–1665 (the Lex Regia). After centuries of rivalry with Sweden and the loss of the eastern provinces (Scania, 1658), Denmark—having backed Napoleon—lost Norway to Sweden by the Treaty of Kiel (1814). It became a constitutional monarchy in 1849 and lost Schleswig-Holstein in 1864. The Oldenburg dynasty (and its Glücksburg line) rules to the present.
Common questions
- What was the Kingdom of Denmark?
- Danish Kongeriget Danmark. The Danish monarchy is among Europe's oldest. The Jelling stones are its "birth certificate": the smaller stone, raised by Gorm the Old c. 950, carries the oldest written reference to Denmark as a polity, its inscription reading (per UNESCO, site 697) "King Gorm made this monument to his wife Thyra, Denmark's ornament"; the larger stone, raised c. 965 by Harald Bluetooth, reads "King Harald bade this monument be made in memory of Gorm his father and Thyra his mother, that Harald who won for himself all Denmark and Norway and made the Danes Christians"—dating the conversion of the Danes to between 953 and 965.
- When is the Kingdom of Denmark shown on the map?
- The border data draws the Kingdom of Denmark AD 936–1017, 1056–1401, in 2 separate periods. The source samples borders at fixed dates, so a span can begin late or run on past the end.
- How large was the Kingdom of Denmark?
- At its greatest extent drawn on this map, the Kingdom of Denmark covered about 164,000 km². That is the largest area the border data gives it across the years it is drawn, not necessarily its greatest extent in history.
Sources
This compendium cites its sources once for the whole document rather than per territory. Its bibliography names the English Wikipedia articles for each territory as the primary basis, with Encyclopædia Britannica, the World History Encyclopedia, German History in Documents and Images, national institutions such as the Swiss Federal Council and the National Museum of Denmark, and the scholarship of Peter H. Wilson and Joachim Whaley on the Holy Roman Empire. The article this entry is anchored on:
- Wikipedia — Denmark en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denmark
This entry was last updated .
This entry was researched and drafted with AI from the sources above, and has not been reviewed by a historian. How entries are made
Text available under CC BY-SA 4.0: reuse it with a credit to The World Through Time and a link to this page. Passages drawing on the Wikipedia articles listed above are also licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 by their contributors.
Border geometry for the map itself comes from Cliopatria v0.12 (Seshat Global History Databank, CC-BY-4.0).
Further reading in Knowledge
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