Portal:Denmark

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Denmark is the smallest and southernmost of the Nordic countries. Unified in the 10th century, it is also the oldest. Located north of its only land neighbour, Germany, south-west of Sweden, and south of Norway, it is located in northern Europe. From a cultural point of view, Denmark belongs to the family of Scandinavian countries although it is not located on the Scandinavian Peninsula. The national capital is Copenhagen.

Denmark borders both the Baltic and the North Sea. The country consists of a large peninsula, Jutland, which borders Schleswig-Holstein; many islands, most notably Zealand, Funen, Vendsyssel-Thy, Lolland, and Bornholm; and hundreds of minor islands often referred to as the Danish Archipelago. Denmark has historically controlled the approach to the Baltic Sea, and those waters are also known as the Danish straits.

Denmark has been a constitutional monarchy since 1849 and is a parliamentary democracy. It became a member of the European Economic Community (now the European Union) in 1973. The Kingdom of Denmark also encompasses two off-shore territories, Greenland and the Faroe Islands, both of which enjoy wide-ranging home rule. The Danish monarchy is the oldest existing monarchy in Europe, and the national flag is the oldest state flag in continuous use.

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Ole Rømer (September 25, 1644 – September 19, 1710) was a Danish astronomer who made the first quantitative measurements of the speed of light (1676).

Rømer was employed by the French government: King Louis XIV made him teacher for the Dauphin, and he also took part in the construction of the magnificent fountains at Versailles.

In 1681, he returned to Denmark and was appointed professor of Astronomy at Copenhagen University. He was active also as an observer, both at the University Observatory at the Round Tower and in his home, using improved instruments of his own construction. Unfortunately, his observations have not survived: they were lost in the great fire of Copenhagen in 1728. However, a former assistant (and later an astronomer in his own right), Peder Horrebow, loyally described and wrote about Rømer's observations.

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The golden horns of Gallehus were two golden horns, one shorter than the other, discovered in near Tønder in 1639 and 1734. Both horns were believed to have been created in the fifth century (Germanic Iron Age). The original golden horns were stolen in 1802 and subsequently destroyed by the thief, Niels Heidenreich, who subsequently served 37 years in jail. A replica set was created in the 1860s, and two additional sets were created in 1980.

The oldest set of replicas were stolen from the Kongernes Jelling museum on 17 September 2007. The Danish National Museum states that the replicas have little monetary value as they are made of gild silver in contrast to the originals that were solid gold. They were recovered by Danish police on 19 September 2007.

Photo credit: Malene Thyssen

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Map of ca. 1635 by Cartographer J. Janssonius, Amsterdam, showing "Gothia" and surrounding "lands" or provinces.

Skåneland, or Skånelandskapen, (Scanian Provinces in English) are Swedish denominations based on the Latin name Terra Scaniae ("Scania Land"), used for the historical Danish land in southern Scandinavia, which as the autonomous polity Scania joined Zealand and Jutland in the formation of a Danish state in the early 800s. As a cultural and historical region, it consists of the provinces Scania, Halland, Blekinge and Bornholm. It became a Danish province, sometimes referred to as the Eastern Province, after the 12th-century civil war called the Scanian Uprising. The region was part of the territory ceded to Sweden in 1658 under the Treaty of Roskilde, but after an uprising on Bornholm, this island was returned to Denmark in exchange for the ownership of 18 crown estates in Scania. Since Bornholm and the small island of Anholt (once forming part of the parish Morup in Halland) have remained Danish, the Danish part of the historical region is sometimes excluded in modern popular usage of the terms.

The name Skåneland is first recorded in print in the year 1719. Today the term is mostly used in historical contexts and not in daily speech. In Danish, Skånelandene is used more often. The terms have no political implications as the region is not a geopolitical entity but a cultural region, without officially established political borders. In some circumstances, the term Skåneland, as opposed to the terms Skånelandskapen and Skånelandene, can also be used as a figure of speech for the province Scania, which has the only administrative entities connected to the name, namely Region Skåne and Skåne County, both created in the late 1990s.

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The Old Town in Aarhus is an open-air village museum consisting of 75 historical buildings collected from 20 townships in all parts of the country. In 1914 the museum opened for the first time as the worlds’ first open-air museum of its kind and till this day it remains one of just a few top rated Danish museums outside Copenhagen serving some 3.5 million visitors every year.

The museum buildings are organized into a small village of chiefly half-timbered structures originally erected between 1550 and the late 1800s in various parts of the country and later moved to Aarhus during the 1900s. There are several groceries, diners and workshops spread throughout the village with museum staff working in the roles of typical village figures i.e. merchant, blacksmith etc. adding to the illusion of a "living" village.