#2022世界杯 #
Hello everyone, I am learning from history.
The World Cup in Qatar is about to welcome Denmark and Tunisia.
When it comes to Denmark, the first impression of many friends is that this small Nordic country came on as a substitute at the 1992 European Championship, after Yugoslavia was banned, but eventually defeated the world champion Germany to win the championship, creating a Danish fairy tale on the pitch...
But don't look at Denmark's current land area of only 43,000 square kilometers (excluding Greenland and the Faroe Islands), but only 5.91 million people, in fact, the ancestors of the famous Nordic overlord, the descendants of Vikings. In this issue, we will talk about the history of Denmark.
1. Descendants of Vikings
Denmark's history dates back to the Germanic period.
The Germanic people lived in northern Europe and other places in BC, and were regarded as barbarians by the ancient Greeks and Romans who were more civilized at that time.
The ancient Greek historian Posidonius was the first to use the term "Germanic". Later, after the establishment of the Roman Empire, it unified Europe and conquered the Germans through many years of war.
But after the decline of the Roman Empire, the barbarian Germanic peoples divided into several branches, one of which began to move west, and the Visigoths, Burgundians, Franks, Ostrogoths, Angles and Saxons of this Germanic tribe all established their own countries.
Today, France, Germany, and England are all countries founded by this Germanic people.
The Germanic people who remained in the north were called North Germanic and were the ancestors of what is now Denmark, Norway, Sweden and other countries.
After entering the Middle Ages, the North Germanic peoples gradually rose, using the boating skills they had honed in living in the bays, planting and harvesting, and using the sea and rivers across Europe to go out and loot, as far as the Mediterranean.
They robbed and killed Englishmen, Slavs, and Germans on the European continent.
In order to express their disgust for this group of robbers, the Germanic peoples of Western Europe called them "Vikings", and the Eastern Slavs called them "Varyags"...
When the Vikings were at their strongest, the leader of a pirate, Rollo, could lead troops to surround Paris, and finally forced the French king Charles III to seal Normandy to Rollo, exchanging money and titles for the other party not to invade, which is the origin of the Duke of Normandy.
In 862 AD, the Viking Rurik also established the Rus principality in Novgorod, founding the Rurik dynasty.
2. The North Sea Empire
By 871 AD, pirates from Denmark had taken possession of England directly.
King Alfred of England lost many battles against the pirates after a long time, and later the Danes could not fight, and the two sides decided to make peace. The Danes took a large stretch of land diagonally across England, from the mouth of the Thames to the Irish Sea.
This area of 25,000 square kilometers is known as the "Danish Law Zone".
By 985, the Danish pirates had formed a unified kingdom.
In 1015, King Knut of Denmark led a combined Danish and Norwegian fleet to attack England, occupying a vast area north of the Thames in 1016, and completely conquering all of England within the year.
He himself ascended the throne of England, becoming the first Dane to be recognized as king by the English.
Cnut also served as King of Denmark and Norway, and his rule included present-day Denmark, Norway, England, most of Scotland, and southern Sweden, making him a veritable Northern European overlord.
Cnut is therefore revered as "Cnut the Great", and his empire is also known as the "North Sea Empire".
Cnut is arguably the only emperor in Northern European history to have almost unified the North Sea coast.
In 1035, Cnut died, and his Great North Sea Empire soon fell apart.
III. Kalmar Union
Three hundred years after Cnut's death, the Danes once again had an English lord, who was still a woman.
In 1375, King Valdemar IV of Denmark died, and before his death he appointed the son of his eldest son-in-law to succeed to the throne; But this practice angered the youngest daughter, Margaret.
Margaret was Queen of Norway at this time, and her husband's blessing was still Queen of Sweden.
After learning of her father's death, Margaret took her 6-year-old child Olaf to ascend the Danish throne first.
In 1380 , her husband Haakon VI died , and Margaret put Olaf on the Norwegian throne. In this way, Margaret became the de facto ruler of Denmark and Norway.
In 1387, Olaf died suddenly at the age of 17, and Margaret was only the "uncrowned queen" who was regent at this time, and could easily be ousted by the Danish nobility.
But these more than ten years of rule made the Danes understand Margaret's statecraft, and the Danes did not want the Germans to be their king, so although Margaret did not give the title of Queen of Denmark, they elected her as the "full ruler and guardian" of Denmark.
The Norwegians did the same, and in February 1388 the Royal Norwegian Parliament elected Margaret as "righteous ruler" and decided that she would rule for life.
At this time, the Swedish king happened to be in a daze, and the Swedish nobles also remembered the benefits of Margaret, the queen of the former king Haakon, and asked her for help.
Margaret was trying to create an empire that included Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, so she naturally accepted the call for help and captured Alblaket, the king of Sweden and her husband's cousin, on the battlefield.
After Margaret captured Stockholm, she offered the Alblake father and son in exchange for rule over Sweden.
Margaret was then crowned King of Sweden.
At this point, Margaret essentially became the queen of Denmark, Norway and Sweden.
In 1397, representatives of Denmark, Norway and Sweden met in the coastal city of Kalmar in southeastern Sweden to formally establish the "Kalmar Union" (Danish: Kalmarunionen), in which the representatives of the three states declared their allegiance to Margaret and installed the 16-year-old Eric (Margaret's grandson) as the monarch of the Triple Alliance and crowned him.
Margaret remained regent.
Unfortunately, in 1412, Margaret contracted the Black Death while visiting abroad and died at the age of 59.
4. Modern Denmark
One hundred years after Margaret's death, the subsequent kings of Denmark did not have her diplomatic and domestic skills, coupled with the Black Death, natural disasters and disasters, the Swedes revolted, and defeated the Danes who came to suppress them, declaring independence in 1523.
The Danes then exhausted their national strength in more than a hundred years of confrontation with the Swedes, and were then pressed to the ground by the British in the Copenhagen War of 1801.
Denmark joined Napoleon's French camp against the British, and after Napoleon's defeat, King Bernadotte of Sweden took advantage of the situation to snatch Norway from Denmark.
In 1864, two southern Danish principalities demanded to join the German Confederation, and Denmark then went to war with Prussia, so how was Denmark a rival between Prussia and Austria? The two principalities were directly incorporated into Prussia and Austria, respectively.
Denmark's territory in Europe is only one loss, and the overseas territories are Iceland, Greenland and a few;
In World War II, Denmark was again occupied by Germany; After the end of World War II, Iceland became independent again;
Although Greenland, the world's largest island, nominally belongs to Denmark, Greenland is semi-independent, and in 2009, Greenland was officially self-governing, and the island's natural gas resource management, judicial and police powers were transferred to Greenland's self-government, and the official language became Greenlandic.
Denmark has the final say only in Greenland's defence and foreign affairs.
Denmark may be small, but it is one of the richest countries in the world, with a per capita GDP of more than $67,000.
Denmark was one of the first European countries to establish diplomatic relations with China, but in recent years, Denmark has gone astray against China, repeatedly following Europe to accuse China of human rights violations, forced labor and the like, and shielding black rioters.
And with the melting of Arctic ice and snow, Greenland's strategic position has gradually risen, and China's infrastructure cooperation with Greenland has also aroused suspicions in Denmark and the United States.
The United States once asked Denmark to exclude Chinese companies from Greenland, and Trump once asked the United States to buy Greenland from Denmark.
However, the disparity in strength between China and Denmark, experts evaluate that the bilateral relationship between China and Denmark is still essentially driven by secondary issues such as economy, science and education, green energy, and climate, so it is likely that Denmark's future diplomacy with China will follow the United States to criticize China, while still pursuing a cautious posture to avoid damage to Denmark's vested interests.
This is probably the tragedy of most small European countries.
Text/Learn from history
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Resources/
Denmark Country Profile – Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China
"Denmark's Two Margaret Queens" – Seo Jindeok.
"Denmark's China Policy 2021" – Institute of International Studies, Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences
"China-Greenland Cooperation in the Context of Complex Geopolitics", Journal of Eastern Liaoning University, Vol. 21, No. 5