Denmark

The oldest continuous monarchy in Europe, and a country that has spent four centuries getting smaller and better organised. Viking Denmark raided and settled England, and Cnut ruled a North Sea empire in the eleventh century. The Kalmar Union of 1397 put all Scandinavia under one crown from Copenhagen until Sweden broke away in 1523. Denmark then lost Sweden's southern provinces in 1658, Norway in 1814 for having backed Napoleon, and Schleswig-Holstein to Prussia in 1864 - a defeat that ended any ambition to be a great power and turned national effort inward towards land reform, cooperative dairying and the folk high school movement. Germany occupied the country in 1940 with almost no fighting, and in October 1943 Danes ferried around seven thousand Jews to neutral Sweden, saving nearly the whole community. The welfare state built after the war combined high taxes with flexible labour law. Greenland and the Faroes remain within the realm with home rule. The Sound Dues on shipping funded the state for four centuries. Lego, wind turbines and pharmaceuticals are the modern exports. Copenhagen is the capital. The country has about six million people and consists of a peninsula and over four hundred islands. Danish is official. The Faroes and Greenland together make the kingdom far larger than the country. Its flag is the oldest continuously used national flag in the world. Bicycles outnumber cars in Copenhagen. Denmark consistently ranks among the least corrupt countries measured, and hygge has been exported as a concept if not always accurately.

MyHistorian
A causal knowledge graph of history