Denmark

No spot in Denmark is far from salt water. Jutland runs north from the German border to Grenen, a sandbar at Skagen where the Skagerrak meets the Kattegat; east of it lie Funen, Zealand and hundreds of smaller islands, with Bornholm far out in the Baltic. Glaciers left the land low and rolling, edged by Wadden Sea mudflats and the white cliffs of Møns Klint. Bridges span the Great Belt and the Øresund. Greenland and the Faroe Islands also belong to the Danish realm.

Around 965 King Harald Bluetooth raised a runestone at Jelling claiming he had made the Danes Christian, and early in the eleventh century Cnut the Great ruled England, Denmark and Norway together. Queen Margaret I joined the Nordic crowns in the Kalmar Union of 1397, and Norway stayed tied to Copenhagen until 1814. Absolute monarchy ended in 1849, and defeat in 1864 cost Schleswig and Holstein. Under German occupation, in October 1943, fishing boats carried most Danish Jews to safety in Sweden.

Hans Christian Andersen, a shoemaker’s son from Odense, gave the world The Little Mermaid; Søren Kierkegaard and Karen Blixen wrote in other veins. Danes prize hygge, the cosiness of candlelight and unhurried meals, and lunch is smørrebrød, dense rye bread topped with pickled herring or liver pâté. Lego bricks come from Billund. Pig farms and dairies feed food exports, Maersk runs container ships across every ocean, Novo Nordisk makes insulin, and Vestas builds wind turbines.