Danish

The Danes are a North Germanic people of Jutland and the Danish islands. In the Viking Age they held Hedeby behind the Danevirke rampart, raids carving out the Danelaw in England and the duchy of Normandy. Gorm the Old at Jelling around 940 was the first recorded Danish king; his son Harald Bluetooth united them and made them Christian around 965, Harald's grandson Cnut the Great ruling a North Sea empire of Denmark, England and Norway.

In 1397 Queen Margaret formed the Kalmar Union of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, but the 1520 Stockholm Bloodbath discredited it, and when Sweden left in 1523 Denmark and Norway stayed united. Lutheranism became the state religion after the Count's Feud of 1534 to 1536.

The seventeenth century checked Denmark: Roskilde in 1658 surrendered Scania, Halland and Blekinge to Sweden; absolutism followed in 1660 with the Danish Code of 1683. The 1807 Copenhagen bombardment and the 1814 Treaty of Kiel detached Norway, though Denmark kept Iceland, Faroes and Greenland.