Dania regnum

Title

Dania regnum

Description

Map shows total Denmark with beautiful coat of arms

ca. 1670

Artist

Merian (1593-1650)

Matthäus Merian (1593 – 1650) , born in Basel, learned the art of copperplate engraving in Zurich and subsequently worked and studied in Strasbourg, Nancy, and Paris, before returning to Basel in 1615. The following year he moved to Frankfurt, Germany where he worked for the publisher Johann Theodor de Bry. He married his daughter, Maria Magdalena 1617. In 1620 they moved back to Basel, only to return three years later to Frankfurt, where Merian took over the publishing house of his father-in-law after de Bry's death in 1623. In 1626 he became a citizen of Frankfurt and could henceforth work as an independent publisher. He is the father of Maria Sibylla Merian, who later published her the famous and wellknown studies of flowers, insects and butterflies.

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.