Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/98

Rh Emigration, which at one time was carried on to a considerable extent, has in recent years greatly diminished. Of the 2088 persons who left Denmark in 1875, 1678 emigrated to the United States of America, 329 to Australia, 47 to Canada, and 34 to other parts of America, including the Salt Lake City.

The Danes are a yellow-haired and blue-eyed Teutonic race, of middling stature, and still bearing traces of their kinship with the Northern Scandinavian peoples. Their habits of life resemble those of the North Germans even more than those of their friendly neighbours the Swedes. The independent tenure of the land by a vast number of small farmers, bönder, who are their own masters, gives an air of carelessness, almost of truculence, to the well-to-do Danish peasant. He is thoroughly well satisfied with himself, takes an eager interest in current politics, and is generally a fairly-educated man of extreme democratic principles. The gaiety of the Danes is surprising; they have nothing of the stolidity of the Germans, or the severity of the Norwegians. The townspeople show a bias in favour of French habits and fashions. The separation from the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, which were more than half German, has intensified the national character; and there is now no portion of the Danish dominions, except perhaps in the West Indian islands, where a Scandinavian language is not spoken.

History.—The original form of the word Denmark is Danmörk, the march or border of the Danir; but whence the name Danir, or Danes, proceeded is undecided, and has given rise to endless antiquarian discussion. A traveller of the name of Pytheas, who lived more than three centuries before the Christian era, is the first to speak of a northern country, under the name of Thule, by which he is believed to have meant Jutland. At this time the inhabitants of Southern Scandinavia are supposed to have been Celts, and it was long after this that what Rask defined as the Sarmatic Invasion (the flooding of the north of Europe by emigrants from Asia) began to take place. These Goths, as they were called, came through Russia into Germany and Denmark, and passed on into Sweden across the Sound. It used to be supposed that they pushed before them the races of the Lapps and Finns, but the latest discoveries of archæology tend to prove that these latter came from Siberia over the north of the Gulf of Bothnia, and met the Goths a little outside the Arctic Circle. The gods anciently worshipped in Denmark were the Æsir, a family of heroic deities in which the characteristics of the leaders of the Sarmatic Invasion are probably enshrined. The language spoken by all the Northern Goths was originally, or very early, called the Dönsk tunga, or Danish tongue, which gave way in the 13th and 14th centuries, when the Danish supremacy was on the decline, to Norrœna Mál, or Norse speech. From the earliest historical accounts we possess it appears that Jutland was divided among a great number of petty chieftains, often at war with one another. These smaa-kongar, or “little kings,” as they were called, were, however, to some degree banded together, and entirely distinct from the eastern Danes of the islands. These also were ruled by a variety of chiefs, but they all recognized the supremacy of the king of Lejre, a city in Zealand somewhere near the present town of Roeskilde. Western Denmark was known to the Northmen as Red Gotland, and consisted of all the mainland north of the Elbe, that is, Holstein, Schleswig, and Jutland. Island Gotland consisted of the islands, and of the provinces of Skaania and Bleking, that is, all the south of Sweden. During the rule of the Valdemar kings, the old chronicler, Saxo Grammaticus, recorded in Latin an immense number of mythical and semi-mythical stories concerning the old history of Denmark, and his chronicle

is a treasure-house of truth and falsehood. According to him, the country takes its name from a King Dan the Famous, who united the smaa-kongar under his sole rule and he was succeeded by a King Frode, with whom a golden age set in. The question of supremacy among the Scandinavian peoples was settled in favour of Sweden at the battle of Bravalla, which was fought, as is supposed, in the 8th century between Sigurd Ring, king of Sweden, and Harald Hildetaud, king of Denmark; with this battle the purely mythic age closes. In 823 the gospel was first preached in Denmark by some Frankish monks sent by the emperor Louis le Debonaire. Little was done in the way of actual conversion, but the road was opened for future missionaries. The famous Ansgarius failed to impress the Danes, though he was consoled by his brilliant success among the Swedes, The Christians, however, began by degrees to be tolerated. The first king of all Denmark was Gorm the Old, who flourished between 860 and 936. He was the son of a king of Lejre, and by great administrative and strategical skill managed to absorb into his hereditary dominions not only all that is now included in Denmark, but Suhleswig, Holstein, Skaania, and even some provinces in Norway. And besides gaining all this territory, he also pushed his conquests for a while as far as Smolensk and Kieff in Russia, as Aix-la-Chapelle in Germany, and as Sens in France, after besieging Paris.

At the period in question, or rather somewhat later, namely, about the early part of the 10th century, commences the authentic history of the country. As early as the 8th century the Danes were remarkable for their well-planned predatory expeditions by sea, as was proved by their repeated invasions of England, their occasional descents on Scotland, and their conquest of Normandy. To cross a sea of three or four hundred miles in breadth was a bold undertaking for men unacquainted with the use of the compass; but the number of islands in Denmark early accustomed the inhabitants to navigation, and gave them a practical dexterity in it.

The early establishment of the Danes in England, and the subsequent arrival of bodies of their countrymen, joined to the talents of two of their princes, Sweyn, or Svend, and Canute, enabled the latter to acquire the crown of England. Canute (or Knud) the Great completed the conquest begun by his father, and became king of England as well as of Denmark in the year 1018; he resided generally in the former country, and left the crown to his sons Harald and Harthaknud. On the death of the latter, without male heirs, the Danish dynasty in England came to a close in 1042.

The feudal system was introduced in the 12th century, which, as well as the 13th, was marked in Denmark by contentions between the sovereign and the barons. About the 13th century the population of the towns in Denmark, as in Germany, though still very small, became such as to entitle them to obtain from the Crown charters of incorporation, and an exemption from the control of the barons, in whom was vested almost the whole property of the land. A regular constitution began now to be formed in Denmark, and the towns sent deputies or representatives to the States, or Parliament, which, it was enacted, should meet once a year. It was also ordered that the laws should be uniform throughout the kingdom, and that no tax should be imposed without the authority of Parliament.

It is unnecessary to recapitulate the successive sovereigns of Denmark in the Middle Ages, of whom few were of distinguished ability. The names of most frequent occurrence among them in those early times were Knud, Valdemar, and Erik. Those of Christiern, or Christian, and Frederick were of later date. One of the most remarkable of the sovereigns in the Middle Ages was Valdemar II., who 