The first humans in Denmark

The first Danes were hunters and fisherman who probably entered the country migrating from Southern and Eastern Europe by the end of the last Ice Age around 10,000 BC.



By 3000 BC, farms had begun to appear on the flat, fertile land we now call Denmark. At first, the farmers used stone tools and weapons, but they later adopted bronze and iron.

By the time of the Iron Age, the Danes had established trade links with the Roman Empire, trading goods such as animal furs and amber. By 200 AD, the Danish people had begun using the Rune language chiseled in stone.

The glamorous, violent Vikings

One of the most notorious periods in Danish history is the age of the Vikings. It began around 793 AD with the raids on the English tidal island of Lindisfarne. The Vikings were eventually to establish settlements in Yorkshire in Northern England and in Normandy in the Northwestern part of France.

The Viking Age lasted about 250 years. At one point, the Danish Viking Sweyn Forkbeard (Svend Tveskæg) and his son Canute the Great (Knud den Store) were the kings not only of Denmark but of Norway, Southern Sweden, Greenland, the Faroe Islands, Shetland, Orkney and parts of England.

The Vikings travelled widely outside their realm, sailing to what today is Russia and Turkey. Their admirable navigation skills at sea also brought them as far as Greenland and North America. They continued to plunder and steal, along with more peaceful activities such as trading precious metals, textiles, glassware, jewellery, and fur. On occasion, they also bought and sold European slaves.