(2) Denmark: Military History and Notable Events

1002 - St. Brice’s Day Massacre (All Facts)

• Massacre in which at least 37 Danes were killed, including Sweyn Forkbeard’s (the King of Denmark at the time) sister Gunnhild, on the orders of King Aethelred II “The Unready” of England

• Massacre which fueled Sweyn Forkbeard and the Danes to invade England

1016 - Battle of Ashingdon (All Facts)

• Battle in which King Canute of Denmark defeated Edmund Ironside of England in which they agreed to split England in half between the two

1030 - Battle of Stiklestad (All Facts)

• Battle in which Canute the Great and his “Farmer Army” forces defeated Olaf Haraldsson and his forces to become King of Norway as well as King of Denmark and King of England

  • Olaf Haraldsson was made a hero and a saint following his death

1397 - 1523 - Kalmar Union (All Facts)

• Treaty signed between the Kingdoms of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden that joined them together as one sovereign state

• Treaty in which the three entities agreed to

  • be united under one monarch

  • carry out a common foreign policy

  • settle matters of royal succession by consensus

• The namesake entity constituted the second largest accumulation of European territories under one leader, Queen Margaret of Denmark, who spearheaded the treaty

• The namesake treaty had the namesake entity grow to some extent out of a general trend towards the creation of larger political entities at the time, such as the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the expansion of Moscow in Russia

1450 - Treaty of Bergen (All Facts)

• Treaty signed between Denmark and Norway that was an act of union in which the two kingdoms agreed to always have the same king

1521 - 1523 - Swedish War of Liberation (All Facts)

• War in which Gustav Vasa and his rebel Swedish forces and peasants rose up and defeated King Christian II and his royal Danish forces, thus ending the Kalmar Union

• War after which Gustav Vasa became King of Sweden