Denmark

Lat/Long: 56.0000, 10.0000

Denmark is a kingdom in northwest Europe. The southernmost of the Scandinavian countries, Denmark is bounded on the north by Skagerrak; on the east by Kattegat, Øresund, and the Baltic Sea; on the south by Germany, and on the west by the North Sea. Settled by the Danes, a Scandinavian branch of the Teutons, in the sixth century, Denmark participated in Viking raids on England and Europe from the eighth to the tenth centuries. Christianized in the tenth and eleventh centuries, Denmark came to dominate Scandinavia in the twelfth century, with the Danish kingdom including southern Sweden, England, Schleswig, and Norway. In the fourteenth century, Margaret of Denmark united all of Scandinavia under her dynasty, but Sweden's independence in 1523 threatened Denmark's supremacy. Denmark lost power and territory in wars against Sweden in the seventeenth century, and by the early nineteenth century, its ascendancy was at an end. In 1807, Denmark joined Emperor Napoleon I in his European wars. After Napoleon's defeat, the victorious powers forced Denmark to cede Norway and Helgoland. In 1864, Denmark ceded the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein to Prussia and Austria after its defeat in the Second Schleswig War.

Merriam-Webster's Geographical Dictionary, 3rd ed. (Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, 1997), 314-15.