Von den Mitnächtigen Ländern. Von gelegenheit des Königreichs Dennmarck

Title

Von den Mitnächtigen Ländern. Von gelegenheit des Königreichs Dennmarck

Depiction of the Danish coat of arms. Reverse depiction of a Danish king with associated text of the kings of Denmark before the birth of Christ.

ca. 1550

Artist

Münster (1489-1552)

Sebastian Münster (1489–1552) was a leading Renaissance cosmographer. His most famous work, the Cosmographia (1544), was a comprehensive description of the world with 24 maps, based on research dating back to 1528. Continuously revised, the 1550 edition already included many new maps. It was the first scientific yet accessible world description published in German, illustrated with numerous woodcuts by artists such as Hans Holbein the Younger. Between 1544 and 1650, the Cosmographia appeared in 46 editions (27 in German) and was translated into several languages. Münster’s work combined the knowledge of scholars, artists, and travelers and remained influential long after his death.

Historical Description

Denmark is a country and sovereign state in Northern Europe and a parliamentary monarchy. Denmark is officially called the Kingdom of Denmark along with the Faroe Islands, which geographically belong to Northern Europe, like the mother country, and Greenland, which belongs to North America. The Danish people are said to have come from Scania to Jutland and the western Baltic islands in the 6th century, where they displaced other Germanic tribes. In the 10th century, Gorm the Old (around 950) united the individual minor kingdoms under his rule. Until 1035, when Knut the Great died, the Danish kings succeeded in conquering large parts of the British Isles. Until well into the 11th century, the Danes, Swedes and Norwegians, among others, were called Vikings, who founded colonies and traded throughout Europe. The only land border is between Denmark and Germany. A Danish minority lives in the former Danish southern Schleswig. With the Kalmar Union, Halland was suddenly in the center of the Danish Empire and, according to the Union Treaty, Erich of Pomerania should have been crowned in Halmstad. In the period that followed, Halland was not spared the wars of the era. In 1434, the landscape was conquered by the fighters of the Engelbrekt uprising and the Falkenberg castle was burned down. In the course of the Three Crown War, the Battle of Axtorna (also: Battle on the Falkenberger Haide) took place here in 1565, during which the Danish general Rantzau defeated a superior Swedish army. Until 1645 Halland belonged to Denmark and was then awarded in the peace of Brömsebro to Sweden for 30 years. Since the Peace of Roskilde in 1658, Halland has finally belonged to Sweden, although Denmark tried again in the Schoen War (1675–1679) to recapture lost territory.