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Humans first trod the earth and dug the region’s flint tens of thousands of years ago during the interglacial period, settling permanently in about 12,000 BC, when the glacial ice retreated enough to support the lichen and mosses of the low-lying tundra, which in turn attracted herds of reindeer.Stone Age culture relied primarily on hunting, but as the climate gradually warmed and the tundra gave way to forest, the reindeer migrated further north. Eventually hunters resettled near the sea and subsisted on fish, sea birds and seals.Villages developed around the fields and the villagers began to bury their dead in dolmen, a type of grave monument comprising upright stones and topped by a large capstone; you can still find a number of these ancient dol-men in Denmark’s meadows. Around 1800 BC the first artisans began fashioning weapons, tools, jewellery and finely crafted works of art in the new metal bronze, traded from as far away as Crete and Mycenae.The arrival of locally-available iron, was the tough raw material for a ground breaking advance: superior ploughs, permitting larger-scale agri-cultural communities. Present-day Denmark’s linguistic and cultural roots date to the late Iron Age and the arrival of the Danes, a tribe thought to have migrated south from Sweden about AD 500.At the dawn of the 9th century, the territory of present-day Denmark was on the perimeter of Europe, but Charlemagne (r 768–814) extended the power of the Franks northward to present-day northern Germany. Hoping to ward off a Frankish invasion, Godfred, king of Jutland, reinforced an im-
pressive earthen rampart called the Danevirke. However, the raiding Franks breached the rampart, bringing Christianity to Denmark at sword point.
