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Across Denmark there are signs of our ancestors dating even further back than the Vikings. Explore the history of Denmark and how Danish culture has been shaped
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- The German Minority in South Jutland
- Overview
- Earliest inhabitants
- The Viking era
- The High Middle Ages
history of Denmark, a survey of important events and people in the history of Denmark from prehistoric times to the present.
Occupying the peninsula of Jutland (Jylland), which extends northward from the center of continental western Europe, and an archipelago of more than 400 islands to the east of the peninsula, Denmark is a part of the northern European region known as Scandinavia. Though small in territory and population, Denmark has nonetheless played a notable role in European history. In prehistoric times, Danes and other Scandinavians reconfigured European society when the Vikings undertook marauding, trading, and colonizing expeditions. During the Middle Ages, the Danish crown dominated northwestern Europe through the power of the Kalmar Union. In later centuries, Denmark established trading alliances throughout northern and western Europe and beyond. Making an important contribution to world culture, Denmark also developed humane governmental institutions and cooperative, nonviolent approaches to problem solving.
By about 12,000 bce, as the climate warmed and the great glaciers of the Pleistocene Epoch (about 2,600,000 to 11,700 years ago) were receding, the first nomadic hunters moved into what is now Denmark, bringing tools and weapons of the Paleolithic Period (Old Stone Age) with them. Shell mounds (refuse heaps also known as kitchen middens) reveal the gradual development of a nomadic hunter-gatherer society, whose tools and weapons continued to progress in sophistication and complexity. Beginning in the 4th millennium bce, during the Neolithic Period (New Stone Age), a peasant culture emerged in Denmark as the people living there further developed their stone tools, began keeping livestock, and adopted agriculture. Those first farmers began to clear land in the forests for fields and villages, and after about 3500 bce they built large, common, megalithic graves. By about 2800 bce a single-grave culture emerged, but whether this shift indicates a change in local custom or another group moving into the area is not clear. In the last phase of the Stone Age in Denmark, the so-called Dagger period (c. 2400–1700 bce), flint working reached its apogee with the production of technical masterpieces, including daggers and spearheads modeled after metal weapons that were being imported at the time.
The growing wealth of the region, particularly of the elite portion of society, in the Bronze Age (c. 1700–500 bce) is illustrated by the fine metalworking skills seen in the spiral decorations on the bronzes of the period—notably the famous Late Bronze Age lurs (long curved, metal horns, often found in pairs), created about 1000–800 bce. During the same period, increasingly varied and improved tools, such as the bronze sickle, enabled better exploitation of cultivated areas. It was also during the Bronze Age that woolen cloth began to be produced in Denmark. (Sheep raised prior to this period were used for their milk and their meat rather than for their wool.)
After 500 bce, bronze was gradually replaced by iron, and a more complex village society developed in a landscape of bogs, meadows, and woods with large clearings. Iron Age farm buildings, generally smaller than those of the Bronze Age, appear to have been moved every generation or so, and the empty plots were then cultivated. That buildings might be reerected on former plots suggests that the population remained in a given area. Objects of great value, as well as people, continued to be laid as offerings in the bogs. The so-called Tollund Man, the well-preserved body of an Iron Age man found in 1950 in a bog near Silkeborg, Denmark, is probably the most famous of these discoveries. Along with evidence of human offerings, there are indications that slavery was practiced during this period.
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More-or-less-fixed trading connections were established with the Romans during the Iron Age, and by about 200 ce the first runic inscription appeared—likely inspired by the Etruscan alphabet of northern Italy and possibly also influenced by the Latin alphabet. The Late Iron Age (c. 400–800) appears to have been a time of decline and unrest, and, in the 6th century, bubonic plague raged. Toward the very end of the Iron Age, the first trading towns appeared at Hedeby (near what is now Schleswig, Germany) and Ribe.
Viking society, which had developed by the 9th century, included the peoples that lived in what are now Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and, from the 10th century, Iceland. In the beginning, political power was relatively diffused, but it eventually became centralized in the respective Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish kingdoms—a process that helped to bring about the end of the Viking era. Although a lot more is known about Viking society than about the earlier peoples in Denmark, the society was not a literate one, runic inscriptions notwithstanding. Some information about the era has thus been gleaned from the Vikings’ apparently rich oral tradition, portions of which were later recorded in poems such as Beowulf and in sagas such as Heimskringla.
The Vikings were superb shipbuilders and sailors. Although they are thought of primarily as raiders, they also engaged in a great deal of trade. In both capacities they traveled widely along routes that stretched from Greenland and North America in the west to Novgorod (now in Russia), Kyiv (now in Ukraine), and Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey) in the east, as well as from north of the Arctic Circle south to the Mediterranean Sea. The Viking trade routes, especially those along the Russian river system, linked northern Europe to both the Arab trading network and the Byzantine Empire. The major goods moving east were enslaved persons, furs, and amber while those traveling west included precious metals, jewels, textiles, and glassware. Danes, for the most part, occupied the center of this system; they generally traveled west to England and south along the coast of France and the Iberian Peninsula.
In addition to raiding and trading, Vikings established settlements, which at first may have served mainly as winter quarters while abroad. The Danes moved primarily to the eastern part of England that came to be called the Danelaw; this region stretched from the River Thames north through what became known as Yorkshire. It appears that a good number of Scandinavian women accompanied their men to England and also settled there. The other major area of Danish Viking settlement was in Normandy, France. In 911 the Viking leader Rollo became the first duke of Normandy, as a vassal of Charles III of France. While the nationality of Rollo is in dispute—some sources say Norwegian and others say Danish—there is no question that most of his followers were Danes, many from the Danelaw area. Unlike the Danes in England, Rollo’s men did not bring many Viking women to France; most of the warriors married local women, resulting in a mixed Danish-Celtic culture in Normandy.
In the midst of the Viking era, in the first half of the 10th century, the kingdom of Denmark coalesced in Jutland (Jylland) under King Gorm the Old. Gorm’s son and successor, Harald I (Bluetooth), claimed to have unified Denmark, conquered Norway, and Christianized the Danes. His accomplishments are inscribed in runic on a huge gravestone at Jelling, one of the so-called Jelling stones. Harald’s conquest of Norway was short-lived, however, and his son Sweyn I (Forkbeard) was forced to rewin the country. Sweyn also exhausted England in annual raids and was finally accepted as king of that country, but he died shortly thereafter. Sweyn’s son Canute I (the Great) reconquered Norway, which had been lost about the time of Sweyn’s death in 1014, and forged an Anglo-Danish kingdom that lasted until his own death in 1035. Various contenders fought for the throne of England and held it for short periods until the question of the succession was settled in 1066 by one of Rollo’s descendants, William I (the Conqueror), who led the Norman forces to victory over the last Anglo-Saxon king of England, Harold II, at the Battle of Hastings.
Throughout the Viking period, Danish social structures evolved. Society was likely divided into three main groups: the elite, free men and women, and thralls (enslaved persons). Over time, differences among members of the elite increased, and by the end of the period the concept of royalty had emerged, the status of the elite was becoming inheritable, and the gap between the elite and the free peasantry had widened. Slavery did not last past the Middle Ages.
There has been much debate among scholars about the role and status of Viking women. Though the society was clearly patriarchal, women could initiate divorce and own property, and some exceptional women assumed leadership roles in their home communities. Women also played important economic roles, as in the production of woolen cloth.
During the course of what historians have called the High Middle Ages, beginning about the 11th century, the political, social, and economic structures that scholars have associated with medieval European society came to Denmark, as well as to the rest of Viking Scandinavia. By the end of the 13th century, the systems now known as feudalism and man...
Vor 2 Tagen · This article covers principally the land and people of continental Denmark. However, the Kingdom of Denmark also encompasses the Faroe Islands and the island of Greenland, both located in the North Atlantic Ocean. Each area is distinctive in history, language, and culture.
Early prehistoric cultures uncovered in modern Denmark include the Maglemosian culture (9,500–6,000 BC); the Kongemose culture (6,000–5,200 BC), the Ertebølle culture (5,300–3,950 BC), and the Funnelbeaker culture (4,100–2,800 BC).
The culture of Denmark has a rich artistic and scientific heritage. The fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875), the philosophical essays of Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855), the short stories of Karen Blixen, penname Isak Dinesen, (1885–1962), the plays of Ludvig Holberg (1684–1754), modern authors such as Herman ...
28. Nov. 2018 · The Culture Of Denmark. Traditional Danish houses. The Scandinavian nation of Denmark occupies a total area of 42,924 square km and hosts a population of around 5,809,502 people. 86.7% of the country’s population comprises of the ethnic Danish people including the Faroese and the Greenlandic peoples. The ethnic Turkish people and ...
From the first Stone Age settlers through the proud Viking connections that still resonate in Danish culture today, on into the modern era in the cosmopolitan, green-oriented city of Copenhagen, Denmark history is a never-ending source of global interest.
