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…Danes emerge around 800 in their respective homelands.

Denmark is apparently united by around 800, primarily in opposition to northward expansion by the Franks under Charles I.

Contemporary Frankish annals begin in 804 to record individual kings of the Danes with whom Charles wars as his Carolingian Empire absorbs the peoples and territories to the immediate south of the Danevirke.

Denmark seems to have been a stable country during the kingship of Eric III Håkønssøn Lam, ruling from 1137, and some contemporary sources speak very highly of him.

The first Danish king who seems to have been strongly influenced by German culture, he had spent his early youth among German knights whose ideals have marked most of his later life.

Also his queen, Lutgard of Salzwedel, is a German.

The reasons for his abdication (the only one by a Danish king) are unknown; he enters a convent in 1146 and dies this same year, and the illness that has killed him may well have been the main reason.

At the abdication of Eric, Sweyn Grathe, the illegitimate son of Erik II Emune and a mistress, has been elected a king on the large island of Zealand (Sjaelland) but for the next years he will have to fight against his rival …

Bishop Absalon leads the Danes in constructing a fortification in 1167 on Slotsholmen, or Castle Isle, situated on the eastern shore of the island of Sjaelland, or Zealand, at the southern end of Oresund (The Sound), the waterway that separates Denmark from Sweden and links the Baltic with the North Sea.

Today a part of Copenhagen Inner City, the city's first castle is situated at the site where Christiansborg Palace, the seat of the Danish Parliament, lies today.

Bishop Absalon founds Copenhagen (Danish: Kobenhavn; or the "merchants' harbor") in 1176 with the fortified Slotsholmen, or Castle Isle, as the city’s nucleus.

Recent archaeological finds indicate that by the eleventh century, Copenhagen had already grown into a small town with a large estate, a church, a market, at least two wells and many smaller habitations spread over a fairly wide area.

Many historians believe that the town dates to the late Viking age, and was possibly founded by Sweyn I Forkbeard, King of Denmark from 986 to 1014.

Saxo Grammaticus renders some Latinized versions of poetry from the Viking era in his Gesta Danorum (Deeds of the Danes), which records the history of Denmark up to 1186 and includes the earliest version of the Hamlet story.

Danish historian and poet Saxo, awarded the honorific title Grammaticus, meaning "the learned," because of his great knowledge, writes the Gesta Danorum, or Historia Danica, a sixteen-volume history of the Danes.

Written in Latin for his patron, Archbishop Absolon of Copenhagen, the book contains songs, Danish traditions of kings and heroes—including the story of Amleth, or Hamlet—and Icelandic legends.

Saxo dies in about 1220 at around age seventy.

Copenhagen, today the capital of Denmark, receives its charter as a city under Jakob Erlandsen, the newly appointed Archbishop of Lund, in 1254.

From the Viking Age, there had been a fishing village by the name of "Havn" (harbor) on the eastern shore of the island of Zealand.

From the middle of the twelfth century the site had grown in importance after coming into the possession of the Bishop Absalon, who had fortified it in 1167, the year traditionally marking the foundation of Copenhagen.

The excellent harbor had encouraged Copenhagen's growth until it became an important center of commerce (hence its name—the first part of the word deriving from the Danish term for commerce).

The Kingdom of Denmark had reached a high point during the reign of Valdemar II, who had forged a Danish "Baltic Sea Empire", which by 1221 extended control from Estonia in the east to Norway in the north.

In this period, several of the "regional" law codes had been given; notably the Code of Jutland from 1241, which asserts several modern concepts like right of property; "that the king cannot rule without and beyond the law"; "and that all men are equal to the law".

Following the death of Valdemar II in 1241, the kingdom is in general decline due to internal strife and the rise of the Hanseatic League.

The competition between Valdemar’s sons—Erik IV “Plough-tax,” Abel, Duke of Schleswig, and Christopher I—will have the long term result that the southern parts of Jutland will become separated from the kingdom of Denmark and become semi-independent vassal duchies/counties.

Eric was supposedly murdered by his brother Abel in 1250; Christopher, elected King upon the death of his older brother Abel in the summer of 1252, has spent most of his reign trying to fight his many opponents.

By accepting Abel's sons as rulers of South Jutland, he has prevented their demands on the throne but in return the border district is now more or less independent.

He has also had to be reconciled with the kings of Norway and Sweden, who had been provoked by Abel's interventions.

Finally, he has had to yield to some of the political demands of the Danish magnates.

The Danehof seems to have become an institution during his rule.

Christopher’s men had arrested and humiliated the proud and self-righteous Archbishop Jakob Erlandsen after Erlandsen had refused to recognize Christopher's son, Eric, as his (Christopher's) rightful successor.

While trying to have his brother Eric canonized, Christopher finds himself excommunicated from the Catholic Church, but the excommunication has little or no effect.

Dying very "unexpectedly" and shortly after taking the Holy Communion on May 29, 1259, Christopher is buried in consecrated ground by the Bishop of Ribe.

His son succeeds him as Eric V under the auspices of his mother, the competent Queen Dowager Margaret Sambiria.

Eric's succession overrides the rights of the descendants of earlier monarchs, counter to the dictates of agnatic seniority.

However, since the reputations of the sons of Abel of Denmark are tainted by acts of fratricide and murder, it is relatively easy to ignore their claims to the throne.

Eric’s accession leads to what will be serious rivalry for generations, yet Christopher's line will be able to successfully retain their claim to the Danish throne.

An unresolved rivalry between Eric V and the adherents of the former king of Denmark, Abel, forces Margaret to write Pope Urban IV in 1263, asking him to allow women to inherit the Danish throne.

This would make it possible for one of Eric's sisters to become reigning Queen of Denmark in the event of Erik V's death (he has no children as of yet).

The Pope acquiesces.

(It is never to become an issue, however: Eric's son, named after his uncle, Eric IV "Ploughpenny" will eventually succeed to the Danish throne.)