Denmark

E

Health and Welfare

Denmark introduced one of the world’s first welfare state systems in the 1930s and remains among the most advanced. The modern social welfare system provides health insurance, covers more than 95 per cent of the Danish population, and provides free medical care and hospitalization, and payment for some essential medicines and some dental care. Most hospitals are municipal. In 2004 there were 273 people per doctor. The infant mortality rate was 4 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2008. In 1990, 6.3 per cent of the country’s GDP was spent on health care. The retirement age is 67; pension rates are linked to the cost-of-living index. Although the system is costly (it is the main reason for Denmark’s high taxes), Danes have strongly resisted calls from the political right for a shift to incorporate more private insurance. Other benefits include extensive sickness, accident, unemployment, and disability benefits, social assistance and provisions for the care of children, including daytime care for the children of working couples.

F

Defence

Denmark abandoned its traditional neutrality after World War II and became a founding member of NATO. In 1988 it became the first NATO country to include women in front-line units. In 1992 it assumed observer status of the Western European Union (WEU) but has refused to become a full member of the organization.

The armed forces in 2004 totalled 21,180. Conscription exists, though only around one in four males serve any time in the military because of a complex “lottery” system that excludes many. Recruits receive between 4 and 12 months of military training. The army maintains a strength of about 12,500 troops. The navy includes a small fleet and a coastal-defence force and has about 3,800 members. The Royal Danish Air Force, which numbered 4,200 troops, is tactically under NATO command. There are about 70,450 reservists and each service maintains a home guard of volunteers aged up to 50 years. The army home guard totals 53,000; the navy, 4,200; and the air force, 8,000 volunteers.

G

International Organizations

Denmark is a member of the United Nations, the European Union, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and NATO.

VI

History

Knowledge of Danish antiquity is derived largely from archaeological research. Some historians believe that Danes inhabiting the southern part of the Scandinavian peninsula migrated to the Jutland peninsula and the adjacent islands in the Baltic Sea in the 5th and 6th centuries. Evidence of major public structures—including a canal, a long bridge, and the ramparts across the neck of Jutland now called the Danevirke—in the 8th century attests to the presence of a fairly strong central authority in the peninsula on the eve of the Viking age. Within a century of their first raid on the British Isles in the 780s, the Danes were masters of the part of England that became known as the Danelaw. Under King Harold Bluetooth in the 10th century, political consolidation increased and Denmark was Christianized. Harold’s son, Sweyn I, conquered all of England in 1013-1014. Sweyn’s son, Canute II, ruled England (1016-1035), Denmark (1018-1035), and Norway (1028-1035).

A

Expansion and Prosperity

In the late 12th and early 13th centuries, the Danes expanded to the east. They conquered the greater part of the southern coastal areas of the Baltic Sea, establishing a powerful and prosperous realm twice the size of modern Denmark. In this era of expansion, feudalism in Denmark reached its zenith. The kingdom became wealthier and more powerful than it had ever been. Most of the country’s once-free peasantry saw their rights reduced. Marked economic progress was made in this era, principally in the development of the herring-fishing industry and in animal husbandry. This progress was the basis for the rise of merchants and craftsmen, and of a number of guilds.

Growing discord between the Danish Crown and the nobility led to a struggle in which the nobility, in 1282, compelled King Eric V to sign a charter, sometimes referred to as the Danish Magna Carta. By the terms of this charter, the Danish Crown was made subordinate to law, and the assembly of lords (Danehof) was made an integral part of the administrative institutions.

A temporary decline in Danish power after the death of Christopher II in 1332 was followed, in the reign (1340-1375) of Waldemar IV, by the re-establishment of Denmark as the leading Baltic power; the Hanseatic League of German merchants and cities controlled trade, however.