San José State University
Department of Economics |
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applet-magic.com Thayer Watkins Silicon Valley & Tornado Alley USA |
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The Economic History of Copenhagen: The Early Years |
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Copenhagen is a fabled city and the pride of the Danish people, a people who feel that they have solved the problems of modern life.
As shown on the map below, Denmark is one big peninsula, Jutland, and several large islands.
Copenhagen is located on the eastern edge of the large island of Sjælland (Zealand) and the adjacent small island of Amager. Its approximate location is indicated by the red circle.
Although Copenhagen is located on the coast of the Baltic Sea its situation is more like that of a city located on river. Like a river city it has spread over both banks of the channel it is located on.
Archbishop Absalon's original name was Axel Hyde. He was a member of the influential Hyde family. He rose to be a major advisor of the Danish king and became the most important statesman of the kingdom. He lived from 1128 to 1201 and was the archbishop of Roskilde, the capital of the kingdom, from 1158 to 1192. From 1178 until his death in 1201 he was also the archbishop of Lund. Lund was in the Danish province of Skane, just across the strait from Copenhagen, in what is now the southern tip of Sweden.
The red circle indicates the location of Copenhagen. As can be seen from the above map it was quite convenient to make a stopover in Copenhagen before or after tranversing the channel. By comparison the Kattegat and the Skagerrak were quite broad. The name Kattegat comes from Dutch and means cat hole-gate and allusion that the chanel is only wide enough for a cat's passage.
(To be continued.)
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