Ribe

Through the later Middle Ages Ribe remained a town of kings and bishops, one of the largest in the realm, with a thriving export of oxen. Christopher of Bavaria was crowned in the cathedral on New Year's Day 1443, and in 1460 the Treaty of Ribe, proclaimed here, bound Schleswig and Holstein to stay forever undivided. The Reformation closed the cathedral in 1536, and in 1542 Hans Tausen, the preacher of the new faith, became Ribe's Lutheran bishop. Then disaster followed disaster. Fire razed the town centre in 1580, and on the night of 11–12 October 1634 a storm surge swept over the marshes, drowning a reported 8,000 people and rising in the cathedral to the height of the pulpit. Toward the end of the 17th century the Ribe river silted up beyond the reach of ships, and the oldest town in Scandinavia sank into a quiet backwater.