Portal:Denmark/Selected article/Archive
This is an archive of articles that have been chosen as the week's selected article on the Denmark Portal.
Today, December 2, 2024, is in week number 49. For previous years' archives, see below:
2011/2012 archive
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The Copenhagen Fire of 1728 was the largest fire in the history of Copenhagen, Denmark. It began on the evening of October 20, 1728, and continued to burn until the morning of October 23. It destroyed approximately 28% of the city (measured by counting the number of destroyed lots from the cadastre), left 20% of the population homeless, and the reconstruction lasted until 1737. No less than 47% of the section of the city, which dates back to the Middle Ages, was completely lost, and along with the Copenhagen Fire of 1795, it is the main reason that few traces of medieval Copenhagen can be found in the modern city.
While the human and property losses were staggering, the cultural loss is still felt today. The University of Copenhagen library was without a doubt the greatest and the most frequently mentioned of such. 35,000 texts and a large archive of historical documents disappeared in the flames. Original works from the historians Hans Svaning, Anders Sørensen Vedel, Niels Krag, and Arild Huitfeldt and the scientists Ole Worm, Ole Rømer, Tycho Brahe and the brothers Hans and Caspar Bartholin were lost. Atlas Danicus by Hansen Resens and the archive of Zealand Diocese went up in flames as well. The archive of the diocese had been moved to the university library the very same day the fire started.
Several other book collections were lost as well. Professor Mathias Anchersen made the mistake of bringing his possessions to safety in Trinitatis Church. Árni Magnússon lost all his books, notes and records, but did manage to rescue his valuable collection of handwritten Icelandic manuscripts. At Borchs Kollegium 3,150 volumes burned along with its Museum Rarirorum containing collections of zoological and botanical oddities. The burned out observatory in Rundetårn had contained instruments and records by Tycho Brahe and Ole Rømer. The professors Horrebow, Steenbuch and the two Bartholins lost practically everything. And on top of all that a large part of the city archive of records burnt along with city hall.
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The Haraldskær Woman is a well-preserved Iron Age bog body naturally preserved in a bog in Jutland, Denmark. The body was discovered in 1835 by labourers excavating peat on the Haraldskær Estate. Disputes regarding the age and identity of this mysterious well preserved body were settled in 1977, when radiocarbon dating determined conclusively that her death occurred around 500 BC. This archaeological find was one of the earliest bog bodies discovered, the other two known being Tollund Man from Denmark and Lindow Man from the UK.
The body of the Haraldskær Woman is remarkably preserved due to the anaerobic conditions and tannins of the peat bog in which she was found. Not only was the intact skeleton found, but also the skin and internal organs. Her body lies in state in an ornate glass-covered coffin, allowing viewing of the full frontal body, inside the Church of Saint Nicolas in central Vejle, Denmark.
After discovery of the body, early theories of her identity centered around the persona of the Norwegian Queen Gunhild, who lived around 1000 AD. Most of the bog bodies recovered indicate the victim died from a violent murder or ritualistic sacrifice. These theories are consistent with the body being hurled into a bog as opposed to burial in dry earth.
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Published in two volumes in 1843, Either/Or (original Danish title: Enten-Eller) is an influential book written by the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, exploring the aesthetic and ethical "phases" or "stages" of existence.
Either/Or portrays two life views, one consciously hedonistic, the other based on ethical duty and responsibility. Each life view is written and represented by a fictional pseudonymous author, the prose of the work depending on the life view being discussed. For example, the aesthetic life view is written in short essay form, with poetic imagery and allusions, discussing aesthetic topics such as music, seduction, drama, and beauty. The ethical life view is written as two long letters, with a more argumentative and restrained prose, discussing moral responsibility, critical reflection, and marriage. The views of the book are not neatly summarized, but are expressed as lived experiences embodied by the pseudonymous authors. The book's central concern is the primal question asked by Aristotle, "How should we live?"
Kierkegaard left Copenhagen in October 1841 to spend the winter in Berlin. Although the main purpose of this visit was to attend lectures by German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, the lectures turned out to be a disappointment for Kierkegaard and many others. During his stay, Kierkegaard worked on the manuscript for Either/Or and returned to Copenhagen in 1842 with draft of the manuscript, which was completed near the end of 1842 and published in February 1843.
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The Royal Danish Navy is the sea-based branch of The Danish Defence force. The RDN is mainly responsible for the maritime defence and sovereignty of danish, greenlandic and faroese territorial waters. Other tasks includes surveillance, search and rescue, icebreaking, oil spill recovery and prevention as well as contributions to international tasks and forces.
During the period 1509-1814 when Denmark was in union with Norway, the Danish Navy was part of the Royal Dano-Norwegian Navy. Today the Danish navy is very modern and most of the large ships were commissioned in the post-Cold War era. The Danish navy has some relatively large ships in the fleet, despite the smallness of the country, primarily due to its strategic maritime location as the NATO member controlling access to the Baltic.
Danish Navy ships carry the prefix KDM which stands for Kongelige Danske Marine (English: Royal Danish Navy).
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The naval Battle of Svolder (Svold, Swold) was fought in September 999 or 1000 in the western Baltic between King Olaf Tryggvason of Norway and an alliance of his enemies. The backdrop of the battle is the unification of Norway into a single state, long-standing Danish efforts to gain control of the country, and the spread of Christianity in Scandinavia.
King Olaf was sailing home after an expedition to Wendland (Pomerania), when he was ambushed by an alliance of Svein Forkbeard, King of Denmark, Olaf Eiríksson, King of Sweden, and Eirik Hákonarson, Jarl of Lade. Olaf had only 11 warships in the battle against a fleet of at least 70. His ships were cleared one by one, last of all the Long Serpent, which Jarl Eirik captured as Olaf threw himself into the sea. After the battle, Norway was ruled by the Jarls of Lade as a fief of Denmark and Sweden.
The most detailed sources on the battle, the kings' sagas, were written approximately two centuries after it took place. Historically unreliable, they offer an extended literary account describing the battle and the events leading up to it in vivid detail. The sagas ascribe the causes of the battle to Olaf Tryggvason's ill-fated marriage proposal to Sigrid the Haughty and his problematic marriage to Thyri, sister of Svein Forkbeard. As the battle starts Olaf is shown dismissing the Danish and Swedish fleets with ethnic insults and bravado while admitting that Eirik Hákonarson and his men are dangerous because "they are Norwegians like us". The best known episode in the battle is the breaking of Einarr Þambarskelfir's bow, which heralds Olaf's defeat.
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The A. P. Moller-Maersk Group (Danish: A.P. Møller-Mærsk Gruppen) is an international business conglomerate more commonly known simply as Maersk. Maersk has activities in a variety of business sectors, primarily transportation (container shipping fleet) and energy (offshore oil exploration and transportation). It is the largest container ship operator and supply vessel operator in the world.
Maersk is based in Copenhagen, Denmark, and has subsidiaries and offices in more than 130 countries worldwide. The group has around 110,000 employees. It stood as number 138 on the Fortune Global 500 list for 2007.
Maersk's activities are organised into four main business segments: Container shipping and related activities; APM Terminals; Tankers, offshore and other shipping activities; Oil and gas activities; Retail acivity; and Shipyards, other industrial companies, interest in Danske Bank, etc.
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The Skuldelev ships is a term used for five Viking ships recovered from Peberrenden by Skuldelev, c. 20 km north of Roskilde in Denmark. The remains of the ships were excavated over four months in 1962. The recovered pieces, which constitute five types of ships and have been dated to the 11th century, provide a good source for the shipbuilding traditions of the late Viking period.
The ships are today exhibited at the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde. Skuldelev 1 is a sturdy sea-going cargo-vessel possibly of the knarr type. Skuldelev 2 is an oak-built, sea-going warship, a longship, possibly of the skeid type. The Skuldelev 3 is a 14 m long and 3.3 m wide cargo ship, possibly of the byrding type. Skuldelev 5 is a small warship of the snekke type. Skuldelev 6 is an 11.2 m long and 2.5 m wide cargo and fishing-vessel of the ferja type.
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The national flag of Denmark, the Dannebrog, is red with a white Scandinavian cross that extends to the edges of the flag; the vertical part of the cross is shifted to the hoist side. The cross design of the Danish flag was subsequently adopted by the other Nordic countries: Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Iceland. During the Danish-Norwegian personal union, the Dannebrog was also the flag of Norway and continued to be, with slight modifications, until Norway adopted its current flag in 1821.
The Dannebrog is the oldest state flag in the world still in use, with the earliest undisputed source dating back to the 14th century. Prior to the use of the Dannebrog, Danish forces were known to have used the raven banner.
The legend of the flag is very popular among Danes, although most consider it to be a myth, albeit a beautiful one. The legend says that during the Battle of Lyndanisse, also known as the Battle of Valdemar (Danish: "Volmerslaget"), near Lyndanisse (Tallinn) in Estonia, on June 15 1219, the flag fell from the sky during a critical stage, resulting in Danish victory.
Danish tradition states that the Dannebrog is not allowed to touch the ground because it came from heaven. Folklore also states that the Dannebrog is not allowed to be hoist at night, because then it is said to salute the Devil.
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Brøndby IF is a Danish professional football (soccer) club based in the town of Brøndby, on the western outskirts of Copenhagen. The club is also known as Brøndbyernes Idrætsforening, or Brøndby and BIF for short. The club, founded in 1964 as a merger between two local Brøndby clubs, has won 10 national Danish football championship titles and five national Danish Cups, since the club joined the Danish top-flight football league in 1981. Brøndby is the most successful Danish club on the European scene, with a UEFA Cup semi-final the best ever Danish result in the European competitions. Furthermore the club was the first Danish club to qualify for the UEFA Champions League, during the 1998-99 tournament.
Since the founding of fellow Copenhagen club F.C. Copenhagen in 1992, the two clubs have had a fierce rivalry, and the so-called "New Firm" games between the two sides attract the biggest crowds in Danish football. With F.C. Copenhagen, Brøndby has consistently formed a duo which have won eleven of the last sixteen Danish Superliga championships, and from 1995 to 2006, the club did not finish below second spot in the league.
Brøndby have always played their games at Brøndby Stadium. Through the first years in the secondary Danish leagues, the stadium was little more than a grass field with an athletics track circling the field of play. Following the first years of success in the highest Danish league, the athletic track was discarded and a further 2,000 seats were installed on top of concrete stands that were built from 1989 to 1990.
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DSB, an abbreviation of Danske Statsbaner (Danish State Railways), is the largest Danish train operating company, and the largest in Scandinavia. While DSB is responsible for passenger train operation on most of the Danish railways, goods transport and railway maintenance are outside its scope. DSB runs a commuter rail system, called S-train, in the area around the Danish capital, Copenhagen, that connects the different areas and suburbs in the greater metropolitan area.
DSB was founded in 1885 when the government-owned companies De jysk-fynske Statsbaner and De sjællandske Statsbaner merged.
On September 1, 1867, the Danish state took over Det danske Jernbane-Driftsselskab (The Danish Railway Operation Company), the major railway company in Jutland and Funen, and consequently, De jysk-fynske Statsbaner (The State Railways of Jutland and Funen) were formed.
The Danish state took over Det sjællandske Jernbaneselskab (The Railway Company of Zealand) on January 1, 1880, forming De sjællandske Statsbaner (The State Railways of Zealand). With the majority of railways on both sides of the Great Belt thus owned by the Danish state, it was not until October 1, 1885 that the companies of Jutland/Funen and Zealand merged into one national railway company, De danske Statsbaner (The Danish State Railways), the merger being finalised on April 1, 1893.
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Lego (trademarked LEGO) is a line of construction toys manufactured by the Lego Group, a privately held company based in Billund, Denmark. The company's flagship product, Lego, consists of colorful interlocking plastic bricks and an accompanying array of gears, minifigures and various other parts. Lego bricks can be assembled and connected in many ways, to construct such objects as vehicles, buildings, and even working robots. Anything constructed can then be taken apart again, and the pieces used to make other objects. The bricks, originally manufactured from cellulose acetate, were a development of traditional stackable wooden blocks that locked together by means of several round studs on top and a hollow rectangular bottom. The blocks snapped together, but not so tightly that they required extraordinary effort to be separated.
The toys were originally designed in the late 1940s in Denmark and have achieved an international appeal, with an extensive subculture that supports Lego movies, games, video games, competitions, and four Lego themed amusement parks.
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The Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy began after twelve editorial cartoons, most of which depicted the Islamic prophet Muhammad, were published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten on 30 September 2005. The newspaper announced that this publication was an attempt to contribute to the debate regarding criticism of Islam and self-censorship.
Danish Muslim organizations, who objected to the depictions, responded by holding public protests attempting to raise awareness of Jyllands-Posten's publication. The controversy deepened when further examples of the cartoons were reprinted in newspapers in more than fifty other countries.
This led to protests across the Muslim world, some of which escalated into violence with police firing on the crowds (resulting in more than 100 deaths, altogether), including setting fire to the Danish Embassies in Syria, Lebanon and Iran, storming European buildings, and desecrating the Danish, Norwegian and German flags in Gaza City. While a number of Muslim leaders called for protesters to remain peaceful, other Muslim leaders across the globe, including Mahmoud al-Zahar of Hamas, issued death threats. Various groups, primarily in the Western world, responded by endorsing the Danish policies, including "Buy Danish" campaigns and other displays of support. Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen described the controversy as Denmark's worst international crisis since World War II.
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Scanian (skånska or skånsk) is a closely related group of dialects which formed part of the old Scandinavian dialect continuum, spoken mainly in the province Scania in Southern Sweden. It is by most historical linguists considered to be an East-Danish dialect group, but due to the modern era influence from Standard Swedish in the region and due to the fact that traditional dialectology in the Scandinavian countries normally have not considered isoglosses that cut across state borders, the Scanian dialects have normally been treated as a South-Swedish dialect group in Swedish dialect research. However, many of the early Scandinavian linguists, including Adolf Noreen and G. Sjöstedt, classified it as "South-Scandinavian", and some linguists, such as Elias Wessén, also considered Old Scanian a separate language, classified apart from both Old Danish and Old Swedish.
Scanian was previously classified as a regional language by SIL International, but before the latest update, the Swedish representative to ISO/TC-37, the technical committee overseeing ISO 639, required that Scanian be removed from the ISO/DIS 639-3, the draft just prior to the final draft FDIS, or a positive vote from Sweden would not be forthcoming. The prior identifier ISO 639-3:scy, as used in the Ethnologue 15th edition, is reserved for Scanian, and may become active again if a request is submitted to have it reinstated during the annual review process. Within the previous SIL International classification of Scanian were the dialects in the province of Scania, some of the southern dialects of Halland (halländska in Swedish), the dialects of Blekinge (blekingska in Swedish) and the dialects of the Danish island of Bornholm (bornholmsk in Danish).
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Skåneland, or Skånelandskapen, (Scanian Provinces in English) are Swedish denominations based on the Latin name Terra Scaniae ("Scania Land"), used for the historical Danish land in southern Scandinavia, which as the autonomous polity Scania joined Zealand and Jutland in the formation of a Danish state in the early 800s. As a cultural and historical region, it consists of the provinces Scania, Halland, Blekinge and Bornholm. It became a Danish province, sometimes referred to as the Eastern Province, after the 12th-century civil war called the Scanian Uprising. The region was part of the territory ceded to Sweden in 1658 under the Treaty of Roskilde, but after an uprising on Bornholm, this island was returned to Denmark in exchange for the ownership of 18 crown estates in Scania. Since Bornholm and the small island of Anholt (once forming part of the parish Morup in Halland) have remained Danish, the Danish part of the historical region is sometimes excluded in modern popular usage of the terms.
The name Skåneland is first recorded in print in the year 1719. Today the term is mostly used in historical contexts and not in daily speech. In Danish, Skånelandene is used more often. The terms have no political implications as the region is not a geopolitical entity but a cultural region, without officially established political borders. In some circumstances, the term Skåneland, as opposed to the terms Skånelandskapen and Skånelandene, can also be used as a figure of speech for the province Scania, which has the only administrative entities connected to the name, namely Region Skåne and Skåne County, both created in the late 1990s.
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Team Saxo Bank-SunGard (UCI Team Code: CSC) is a professional cycling team from Denmark which competes in the road bicycle racing series the UCI ProTour. The team is owned and managed by former Tour de France winner Bjarne Riis, under the management of his company Riis Cycling. The sponsor is a Danish investment bank.
Founded for 1998 Team home – Jack & Jones, the team started in cycling's second division. In 2000 it moved into the UCI ProTour, previously as the First Division. Since 2000, under differing sponsor names (Memory Card-Jack & Jones and CSC-Tiscali), the team rode the Tour de France. It has won stages in all three Grand Tours and won overall in two of them. In the 2008 Tour de France, Carlos Sastre won the general classification, Andy Schleck won the young rider classification, and the team won the overall team classification, and Ivan Basso won the 2006 Giro d'Italia, as well as finishing third and second in the 2004 and 2005 Tour de France. In addition, the team has won many major classics, including 6 Monuments.
The team has a reputation for consistently being ranked as one of the top cycling teams in the world, having won the UCI ProTour's team classification each year from 2005 through 2007, as well as winning the CQ Team Rankings from 2005 through 2008.
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Liselund is an 18th-century aesthetically landscaped park, complete with several exotic buildings and monuments. Located close to Møns Klint on the north-eastern corner of the Danish island of Møn, it is deemed to be one of the finest examples in Scandinavia of Romantic English gardening. The park was created in the 1790s by French nobleman Antoine de Bosc de la Calmette for his wife Elisabeth, commonly known as Lisa. Liselund, roughly translated, means Lise's grove.
Antoine de la Calmette was a Hugenot whose family had been forced to leave France for Holland. His father was a diplomat who after terms in Switzerland and Portugal, finally arrived in Denmark where, in 1776, the family was naturalised and recognised as Danish nobility.
In January 1777, he married Catharina Elisabeth Iselin, the daughter of the Swiss baron Reinhard Iselin who had also emigrated to Denmark. In 1783, Antoine was appointed prefect of Møn. The same year, he bought six hectares of land on the eastern coast of the island in the parish of Magleby.
He and his wife, who travelled widely, had become interested in Jean-Jacques Rousseau's philosophy of naturalism in the Age of Enlightenment. As a result, Antoine designed the park in the Romantic spirit of the time as a loving gift for his wife. It was intended as a retreat where the family could spend a few days or weeks at a time, often with invited guests, away from the hardships of their working lives at Marienborg on the other side of the island.
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The Viking Age is the term for the period in European history, especially Northern European and Scandinavian history, spanning the late 8th to 11th centuries. The Viking Age followed the late Germanic Iron Age. During this period, the Vikings, Norse warriors and traders, raided and explored much of Europe, Southwest Asia, Northern Africa and Northeastern North America. As well from the exploration of Europe's oceans and rivers with their advanced knowledge of navigation and extending their trading routes across vast parts of the continent, they also engaged in war, looted and set slavery in many Christian communities of medieval Europe for centuries, contributing to the development of the feudal system in Europe, including the castles and barons (serving as defense against Viking raids).
Norse society was based on agriculture and trade with other peoples and placed great emphasis on the concept of honour, both in combat and in the criminal justice system. It was, for example, unfair and wrong to attack an enemy already in a fight with another.
Their language, Old Norse, became the mother-tongue of present-day Nordic languages (notably including Danish).
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The Great Belt Fixed Link (Danish: Den faste Storebæltsforbindelse) is the fixed link between the Danish islands of Zealand and Funen across the Great Belt. It consists of a road suspension bridge and railway tunnel between Zealand and the islet Sprogø, as well as a box girder bridge between Sprogø and Funen. The "Great Belt Bridge" (Danish: Storebæltsbroen) commonly refers to the suspension bridge, although it may also be used to mean the girder bridge or the link in its entirety. The suspension bridge, known as the Eastern Bridge, has the world's second longest free span (1.6 km).
The link replaces the ferries which had been the primary means of crossing the Great Belt for more than 100 years. After decades of speculation and debate, the decision to construct the link was made in 1986; while it was originally intended to complete the railway link three years before opening the road connection, the link was opened to rail traffic in 1997 and road traffic in 1998. At an estimated cost of DKK 21.4 billion (1988 prices), the link is the largest construction project in Danish history.
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Nazi Germany's occupation of Denmark was commenced by Operation Weserübung 9 April 1940, and lasted until the German forces withdrew at the end of World War II following their surrender to Allied forces on 5 May 1945. Contrary to the situation in other countries under German occupations during the war, most Danish institutions continued to function relatively unaffected until 1943. The Danish government remained in the country in an uneasy relationship between a democratic and a totalitarian system until German authorities dissolved the government following a wave of strikes and sabotage.
The occupation of Denmark was never an important objective for the German government. The decision to occupy its small northern neighbour was made to facilitate the invasion of the strategically more important Norway; and as a means against the expected British campaign in Norway. German military planners believed that a base in the northern part of Jutland, most importantly the airfield of Aalborg, would be essential to the invasion of Norway, and they began planning the occupation of parts of Denmark, but as late as February 1940, the decision to occupy Denmark had not yet been made. The issue was finally settled when Hitler personally crossed out the words die Nordspitze Jütlands (the Northern tip of Jutland) and replaced them with Dä, a German abbreviation for Denmark.
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The Count's Feud (Grevens Fejde), also called the Count's War, was a civil war that raged in Denmark in 1534–1536 and brought about the Reformation in Denmark.
The Count's Feud takes its name from the Protestant Count Christopher of Oldenburg, who supported the Catholic King Christian II, deposed in 1523 and at that time being held in prison.
After Frederick I's death in 1533, the Jutland nobility proclaimed his son, then Duke Christian of Gottorp, as King under the name Christian III. Meanwhile, Count Christoffer organized an uprising against the new king, demanding that Christian II be set free. Supported by Lübeck and troops from Oldenburg and Mecklenburg, parts of the Zealand and Scania nobilities rose up, together with cities such as Copenhagen and Malmö. The violence itself began in 1534, when a privateer captain who had earlier been in Christian II's service, Klemen Andersen, called Skipper Clement, at Count Christoffer's request instigated the peasants of Vendsyssel and North Jutland to rise up against the nobles. The headquarters for the revolt came to be in Aalborg. A large number of plantations were burned down in northern and western Jutland.
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The Isted Lion (Danish: Istedløven, German: Flensburger Löwe or Idstedt Löwe) is a Danish war monument originally intended as a monument of the Danish victory over Schleswig-Holstein in the Battle of Isted (July 25, 1850) — at its time the largest battle in Scandinavian history. Others perceived it more as a memorial for the Danish dead in the battle.
Originally erected in Flensburg, Schleswig, it was moved to Berlin by Prussian authorities and remained there until 1945. It was returned to Denmark as a gift from the United States Army and is currently located at Søren Kierkegaards Plads in Copenhagen. A number of politicians have suggested that it be returned to Germany but the issue remains controversial.
Following the Danish victory over Schleswig-Holstein in the First War of Schleswig (1848–51), Danish sculptor Herman Wilhelm Bissen was commissioned to create a monument to the ordinary Danish soldier, likely the first example of a Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. This monument Landsoldaten (the Foot Soldier) was unveiled in Fredericia in 1858.