Denmark History
-People has been living in Denmark for about 100,000 years, but the earliest had to leave with the expansion of the icecaps. Permanent occupation started in 12,000BC.
- People who became known as Vikings inhabited much of Denmark for several hundred years from the 8th to the 11th centuries. They had a more complicated social structure than most previous societies living in the area, and became famous for raiding and trading throughout the rest of Europe.
- After one of its beloved Canute the Great in the 11th century, Denmark lost its hold on Britain and was raided by Norway's Vikings.
- Due to difficulties faced with nobility and churches, kings found it exceedingly harder to control the Denmark country. By the late 13th century, royal power had waned, and the nobility forced the king to grant a charter , considered Denmark's first constitution .
- Denmark proved that it was a beneficial to both the Hanseatic League and the Counts of Holstein. The Holstein Counts took lead of large portions of Denmark because the king would grant them fiefs in exchange for money to finance their operations. As a result, by the 1320s the king was largely held by the orders of these counts, who owned most of Denmark. The country had effectively been broken apart from existance by the 1330s and 1340s.
Scandinavia in 1219.
- The Danish liberal and national movements gained momentum in the 1830s, and after the European revolutions of 1848 Denmark became a constitutional monarchy on June 5 , 1849 .
- The Scandinavian Monetary Union , a monetary union formed by Sweden and Denmark on May 5 , 1873 , fixed both their currencies against gold at par to each other. The outbreak of World War I in 1914 brought an end to the monetary union. Sweden abandoned the tie to gold on August 2 , 1914 , and without a fixed exchange rate the free circulation came to an end.
- In WWII, Denmark claimed neutrility and signed a non-aggression pact with Nozi Germany. Yet despite that, they were still put under invasion by the Germans until May 5, 1945.