Denmark–Norway

History

Denmark–Norway was a realm in which a single king ruled the Kingdom of Denmark and the Kingdom of Norway at the same time. Iceland and the Faroe Islands came with Norway, and the southern part of today's Sweden also lay under the king's rule.

Its greatest strength was its position: any ship sailing from the North Sea into the Baltic had to pass through narrow straits watched by Denmark, and the king collected a toll from every one of them. In the early 17th century Christian IV used that money to found new towns and build up his fleet, and he tried to extend his influence into northern Germany.

But when he joined the Thirty Years' War on the Protestant side in 1625, he was badly beaten at Lutter the following year, and the Treaty of Lübeck in 1629 forced him to withdraw and give up his ambitions in Germany. Leadership in the Baltic passed to neighbouring Sweden.

Denmark has a famous legend about its flag. During a battle in Estonia in 1219, when the Danish army was giving way, a banner of a white cross on a red field is said to have floated down from the sky; the soldiers who saw it took heart and won.

That flag, the Dannebrog, is still the Danish national flag and is counted as the oldest national flag in continuous use in the world.