A History of Denmark

Knud J. V. Jespersen

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781137611802
• Edition: 3
• eBook ISBN:
  9781350307117
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

In this introductory guide, Knud Jespersen traces the process of disintegration and reduction that helped to form the modern Danish state, and the historical roots of Denmark's international position. Beginning with the Reformation in the sixteenth century, Jespersen explains how the Denmark of today was shaped by wars, territorial losses, domestic upheavals, new methods of production, and changes in thought. Focusing on the interplay between history, politics and economics, this illuminating text offers an insider's view of Danish identity formation over the last centuries. This engaging textbook is an ideal resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students taking courses on Danish, Scandinavian or Nordic History. Concise and accessible, it will also appeal to anyone interested in gaining a clear understanding of the development of Denmark.

Map 1 Denmark.

Map 2 Scandinavia.

Source: Maija Jansson, Realities of Representation (Palgrave, 2007). Reproduced with permission of Palgrave Macmillan.

1Introduction: What Is Denmark and Who Are the Danes?

A DESCRIPTION

Consulting a modern encyclopaedia under ‘Denmark’ shows that today this is the name of a state stretching from 54º to 58º north and 8º to 15º east. Denmark proper consists of Jylland (the Jutland Peninsula) and 406 islands, of which 79 are inhabited. The largest and most populous of these is Sjælland (Zealand), where the capital city, Copenhagen, is located, followed by Fyn. The Baltic island, Bornholm, is the easternmost part of the island kingdom. The total area is nearly 43,000 km². To this should be added Greenland and the Faroe Islands, which with Denmark itself form a national federation.¹

Denmark itself has 7300 km of coastline and a 68 km land border with Germany. It is very definitely a low-lying country – the highest point is 173 metres above sea level – and well suited for agriculture, though poor in mineral resources. Approximately 64 per cent of the total land area is under cultivation. Twenty-two per cent is woodland, heath, moor, marsh, dunes and lakes. The remainder consists of buildings and transport infrastructure. The country is delimited to the west by the North Sea, while the Danish islands demarcate the Kattegat from the Baltic. Thus the country lies across the sea route from the Baltic to the oceans and the route from the Nordic countries to Central Europe. This position as a gateway has played a very important role in the history of the country.

The population of Denmark is around 5.2 million, of which 85 per cent live in towns. Only 5 per cent are employed in agriculture and fishery, whereas 27 per cent work in industry or construction. The remaining 68 per cent are in the public or private service sector or unemployed.

By European standards the country is small, of a similar size to Switzerland, Belgium or the Netherlands, but without their central location and occasionally decisive role in European history. As a small country on the edge of Europe, Denmark, along with its Scandinavian neighbours, Norway and Sweden, has traditionally been viewed as part of the periphery of Europe, just like the Eastern European countries and the Balkans. The following quotation from H. G. Koenigsberger’s short history of Europe 1500–1789 illustrates this:

Clearly, the history of Europe is comprehensible only if it is constantly seen in its relations to Europe’s neighbours. For over a thousand years, after the end of the Roman Empire in the west, Europe was on the defensive: against the Muslim Arabs along its Mediterranean frontier in the south, against the seafaring Norsemen from Scandinavia in the north and west, and against successive attacks of different Asiatic peoples in the east, from the Huns, in the fifth century, to the Avars, Magyars, Mongols and, eventually and most persistently, the Turks.²

Here the Scandinavians, and thus the Danes, are considered as enemies of Latin Europe on a par with the Muslim Arabs, the Asians of the steppes and the Ottoman Turks. It was not until Christianity spread to Scandinavia over a thousand years ago that a process of assimilation started, slowly converting Denmark from being a hostile neighbour to that of being a part of European culture. Denmark’s marginal geographical position in relation to the economic and cultural European core that is centred on the English Channel has also been of great significance in the more recent history of the country.

One other geopolitical factor deserves to be highlighted in order to understand the size of Denmark and why it has become what it is today. This is its ambiguous location. From a historical perspective, the country is both a Baltic power and part of mainland Europe. The first entailed a strong preoccupation over many centuries with the balance of power in the Baltic and resulted in a centuries-long rivalry with Sweden, the other major Baltic power. The second, especially after the unification of Germany in the second half of the nineteenth century, has been of critical importance for the international standing of the country, and still is. A strong, powerful and united Germany to the immediate south forced Denmark to act according to German, and thus European, conditions to a much greater degree than before. In some ways Denmark’s position since the middle of the nineteenth century resembles that of Scotland with its powerful neighbour, England, to the south.

From a longer historical perspective, the double position and role of Denmark can perhaps best be illustrated by the fact that the Danish kings were also Dukes of Holstein until 1864 and so had European interests to safeguard within the framework of the Holy Roman Empire until its dissolution in 1806, and afterwards in regard to Wilhelmine Germany. At the same time, right up to the middle of the nineteenth century, the kings obtained a significant part of their income from the Sound Dues, which were tolls levied on ships passing through Øresund. In itself this was a symbol of their dominance over the Baltic. So, the Danish kings were at one and the same time northern German princes and leading players in the Baltic region. This double position on the threshold of two very separate worlds has left an indelible mark on the historical destiny of Denmark.

Denmark’s current commonwealth with the geographically remote Faroe Islands and the arctic Greenland is in many ways an anomaly, but it also serves as a reminder that the small, homogenous nation which is the Denmark of today is the product of a long historical development which can best be described as a process of reduction.

At the start of the period treated in this volume, under the House of Oldenborg, the kings of Denmark held sway over a much greater territory than today. First and foremost, after the personal union of 1380, the kingdom included Norway and its extensive North Atlantic possessions – Greenland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands. From 1536, Norway became formally integrated, virtually a province. The core area of Denmark also included the Scanian provinces on the southern tip of the Scandinavian Peninsula and Gotland, the large island in the Baltic. The duchies of Schleswig and Holstein were also included in this huge state, of which Copenhagen was the capital, commanding the most important sea route into the Baltic, the Øresund.

In other words, this was an enormous North Atlantic–Baltic empire, stretching from the North Cape to the River Elbe in the south – a distance just as big as that from the Elbe to Gibraltar, and from the arctic Greenland in the north-west to Gotland in the east. This huge, unified kingdom extended over several climatic belts and ruled a very diverse population: Eskimos, Norwegians, Danes and Germans, each of whom spoke its own native tongue, lived in very different climates and had very different cultures. In reality the difference in lifestyle between the prosperous Scanian farmers and the hunters of Greenland was just as great as that between the olive farmers of sunny Italy and the foresters of the dense, dark Swedish forests.

The history of Denmark over the last 500 years is principally the story of how this extensive and diverse unified empire, held together by the sovereignty of the Danish crown and regular shipping, slowly disintegrated under the changing circumstances of the times, with the dissolution of the component parts resulting finally in there only remaining the small core area which is today called Denmark. This huge process of disintegration and reduction, critical to an understanding of modern Denmark, is one of the principal themes of this account.

THE DANES, ACCORDING TO ROBERT MOLESWORTH

Another theme is an attempt to provide a historical explanation of the traditions and character of the modern Danes. Just like the country in which they live, these are the result of a long historical process, the course of which, over the last 500 years, is traced here. However, describing oneself objectively is virtually impossible, and so perhaps a good place to start would be a brief description of the nature of the Danish lifestyle and ‘national character’ as observed by various foreigners at different times. It is probably most appropriate to start with the best-known historical description of Denmark and the Danish, Robert Molesworth’s famous book An Account of Denmark as It Was in the Year 1692, which was published in 1694.

The Irish-born English diplomat Robert Molesworth (1656–1725) was British Ambassador to the absolutist Danish Court in Copenhagen for a few years around 1690. Shortly after his return home from his duties, which did not proceed exactly harmoniously, he wrote his Account, in which he collected his impressions of the country, its people and political regime. This was intended to be of instructive value to Molesworth’s fellow countrymen, as shown by the following quotation:

Some naturalists observe that there is no plant or insect, how venomous or mean soever, but is good for something towards the use of Man if rightly applied: in the like manner it may be said, that several useful lessons may be learnt, conducing to the benefit of Mankind, from this Account of Denmark, provided things be taken by the right handle.

As his choice of words suggests, he did not entertain a particularly high opinion of Denmark or the Danes, and this impression is confirmed elsewhere in the text: ‘The language is very ungrateful’, he wrote, ‘and not unlike the Irish in its whining complaining tone.’ He described the Danes as desperately poor and oppressed by a tyrannical absolutist regime which in the course of just one generation had reduced the once free-born Nordic population to a condition of slavery. He found the climate quite simply odious, and described the capital of the country, Copenhagen, as a dirty little town with no sign of the character that distinguished other large European cities.³

The real purpose behind Molesworth’s Account was evidently to use Denmark as a terrifying example to his countrymen of the dangers of an absolutist regime and of giving up the right of self-determination. And so his description of the conditions in Denmark can hardly be taken at face value. In addition, his personal experience of Denmark was mainly limited to Copenhagen and its surroundings. Thus, his description cannot really be taken as comprehensive either of Denmark or the Danes in 1692. It should rather be seen as an impulsive attack by a disappointed diplomat against a regime he detested and against which he wished to warn the political decision-makers of his own country. Even so, the substance of his critical observations ought not to be dismissed out of hand, and the discussion later on in this book about the conditions in Denmark in the late seventeenth century and the events which created them may be regarded as the present author’s assessment of the extent to which Molesworth was justified from a scholarly point of view, and how far he overshot the mark.

SIR JAMES MELLON AND THE DANISH TRIBE

The same critical attitude cannot be considered to apply to another, later account of Denmark and the Danes, written by another British Ambassador to Copenhagen long after Molesworth. This was Sir James Mellon, whose knowledge of the country came not only from his time as Ambassador in the 1980s, but also from a long period in the country as a student, especially at Aarhus University. Almost exactly 300 years after Molesworth’s book, in 1992 Sir James published a very personal account of the country and its inhabitants as they appeared to a sympathetic and perceptive British observer. The book was called About old Denmark . . . A Description of Denmark in the Year of Our Lord 1992.

Sir James introduced his account, which was both sympathetic and perspicacious, with a statement which, he believed, reflected the most significant characteristic of the Danes, and one which formed the underlying thesis of his book: ‘T...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Praise for the First Edition
• Preface to the Third Edition
• Acknowledgements
• Map 1 Denmark
• 1 Introduction: What Is Denmark and Who Are the Danes?
• 2 Foreign and Security Policy: From the Gatekeeper of the Baltic to a Midget State
• 3 Domestic Policy, 1500–1848: The Era of Aristocracy and Absolutism
• 4 Domestic Policy since 1848: Democracy and the Welfare State
• 5 The Church and Culture from Luther to the Present
• 6 Economic Conditions: The Old Denmark, 1500–1800
• 7 Economic Conditions: The New Denmark since 1800
• 8 The Danes – a Tribe or a Nation?
• Notes
• Select Bibliography
• A Short Chronology Since 1500
• Index