Explore the History of Denmark

Denmark, between the North Sea and the Baltic, was settled by reindeer hunters as the ice retreated around 12,500 BCE. Stone Age farmers raised dolmens and passage graves, Bronze Age chiefs offered the Trundholm sun chariot to the bogs, and Iron Age peoples left bog bodies, great weapon sacrifices and the Golden Horns of Gallehus.

In the Viking Age Danish fleets raided and settled from England to Normandy. Gorm the Old and Harald Bluetooth united the kingdom and made it Christian, and Cnut the Great ruled a North Sea empire. Under the Valdemars Denmark became a Baltic power, and Margaret I brought the three Nordic crowns together in the Kalmar Union of 1397.

The Reformation of 1536 made Denmark–Norway a Lutheran state, but wars with Sweden cost it Scania in 1658, and the Napoleonic Wars cost it Norway in 1814. The constitution of 1849 ended absolute monarchy; after the loss of Schleswig in 1864 a smaller Denmark rebuilt itself through cooperatives and folk high schools, survived the German occupation and became a welfare state within NATO and the European Union, with the Faroe Islands and Greenland as self-governing parts of the realm.

Explore the ten ages below through selected events from the timeline.