The first settlement

In the Copenhagen area, settlements have existed for more than 6,000 years, and from around the year 700 there was a permanent fishing village in the place that today forms the center of the city. Traces of boat bridges have been found at Gammel Strand, and the remains of a Viking farm have been excavated around Kongens Nytorv.

It is believed that the harbor of the fishing camp was around today’s Vingårdsstræde and that from here they were fished for herring and sailed to Skåne. From the harbor there are roads that ran along what later became the shopping street and the shopping street.

Port city and medieval times

Copenhagen were first mentioned in 1043 with the name Harbor, which was still a rather insignificant village by the sea. As trade in the area increased, not least between Roskilde and the capital Lund in the Danish Skåne, the port gradually grew.

In 1150, King Valdemar the Great granted Bishop Absalon power over the Port, and in 1167 he founded the new castle and with the city of the merchants, Copenhagen. The castle acted both as a residence and as a fort to keep pirates away from the ever-larger city.

Copenhagen’s growing prosperity made the city a new competitor in the Baltic Sea region, and northern German Lübeck attacked the city twice in the 13th century. Both times, Copenhagen was quickly rebuilt. These were also the years when Bishop Erlandsen granted Copenhagen city rights; it happened in 1254.

By 1334, the population had reached 5,000 people, and Gammeltorv was now an important meeting place in the country. The city’s development had also attracted many Germans, which contributed to increased development. In the middle of the century, royal power conquered Copenhagen from the church, but before long it was a downturn for the city.

In 1368, a naval attack from the Hanseatic League, and Copenhagen was destroyed. The city’s castle was also destroyed on that occasion, and after that Copenhagen’s growth was put back for a number of years. The king returned the city to the church in 1375, and the population is believed to have been around 4,000 at this time.

The Kalmar Union

In 1397, Copenhagen became the center of the unified North during the Kalmar Union. It happened when Queen Margrethe I married the King of Norway. She also became the real ruler of Sweden and other areas of the Union. However, Copenhagen was still the city of the church, as it was Roskilde Bishop who decided here.

In 1417, King Erik of Pomerania regained power over Copenhagen from the church, and the city now became the residence of the regents.

Copenhagen was central to the Kingdom, which consisted of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, and the city flourished and quickly also became a military and political center. King Christian I was the first to be crowned in Copenhagen, and he initiated the construction of new buildings and institutions, including Copenhagen Castle and the University, dating from 1479.

Reformation and Christian IV

The Reformation reached Denmark and Copenhagen in 1536, but in the years before there had been domestic strife, which ended with King Christian III throwing the bishops into prison and proclaiming the Protestant faith which remains the state religion of Denmark.

In 1596, Christian IV was crowned king, and in his reign he made a mark on someone in Copenhagen. Many of the city’s finest buildings have been erected during his time, including Rosenborg, Round Tower, Børsen, Nyboder, the Christianshavn district and the beautiful Frederiksborg Castle.

The area of ​​Copenhagen was almost doubled with the expansion to the north and to Christianshavn, both of which were within the new violence facilities that were established. On the same occasion, the harbor was greatly developed, and to house the many new sailors in the larger fleet, the townhouses in Nyboder were erected.

The monarchy and the 18th century

Unfortunately, Denmark had lost Skåne, Halland and Blekinge in 1658, and as a result, a reign was held in Copenhagen in 1660. At that meeting the nobility was abolished in favor of the monarchy.

Despite the fact that Copenhagen was no longer the center of the kingdom, the city grew steadily, and in the early 18th century 60,000 people lived in the city, all of which were still mainly referred to the small area of ​​the original medieval towns .

The Great Nordic War broke out in the year 1700, and Denmark became allied with Russia’s Peter the Great in the battles against Sweden. A Swedish-English-Dutch fleet defeated and bombed Copenhagen that year, but the city came through the attack without major damage. One consequence of the action, however, was that Denmark withdrew from the war for a time, and Copenhagen’s fortification was expanded to make the city less vulnerable to any recurrence.

In 1711, the city was hit by a plague epidemic in which a third of the population died, and later in the century Copenhagen was hit by two major serious fires, in 1728 and again in 1795, which destroyed large areas of the city. It became the starting point for a large new building of larger stone houses, which can be seen in some of the city’s neighborhoods today.

English terror bombings

The destruction of the city continued in 1801 and 1807, with the English Navy bombing Copenhagen from the sea during what is considered the world’s first terrorist bombing.

In 1801, English Lord Nelson had defeated the Danish capital, without any real attack on the city. In 1807, when England wanted to prevent the neutral large Danish fleet from falling into the hands of French Napoleon, the city was besieged from the month of August. A colossal bombardment was launched on September 2, and it lasted until September 5. 1,600 inhabitants died, 300 houses and the city’s tallest church tower were destroyed, along with much else.

Terrorist bombing, among other things, used new rocket types that set fire to the city and hit civilian targets. After the bombing, England seized the Danish fleet and without it Copenhagen could not maintain its leading and lucrative trading position in the Baltic Sea area.

19th Century Copenhagen

Following the English terrorist bombs in 1807 and the consequent loss of Norway in 1814, Copenhagen merchants no longer had a monopoly on trade in Norway, and with the greatly reduced fleet characterized poor economy and tedious decades after the end of the Napoleonic wars. .

However, the 19th century also became the golden age of Denmark and thereby Copenhagen, where artists and scientists made their mark internationally. HC Andersen, Søren Kierkegaard and Bertel Thorvaldsen were among those who characterized the time.

Throughout the 19th century, Copenhagen generally developed tremendously. Industrialization came to town. Here large shipyards and other industries were built, in 1847 the first railway was built at Roskilde. The city’s medieval ramparts were also closed down, as large new residential areas emerged in the current bridge districts and in Frederiksberg, causing a boom in population.

The King’s residence castle, Christiansborg, was hit by a new fire during the growing season, and the royal family moved to the current regent residence in Amalienborg. Christiansborg stood for a few years as a fire blank, but the large complex was rebuilt in the early 1900s as the country’s new parliament.

The 20th century to the present

At the beginning of the 20th century, Copenhagen’s almost explosive growth continued with the construction of large new suburbs in Zealand and Amager. Copenhagen rounded out 500,000 inhabitants, making it an international metropolis. The city’s new town hall and large landscaped main station were opened every few years and the city plan was modernized.

Copenhagen’s buildings came graciously through World War II, with only a few bombings being made, and this was one of the reasons why the city became a hub for Scandinavia soon after the war; for example, for air traffic, where SAS established its hub at Copenhagen Airport in Kastrup.

Copenhagen’s network of S-trains was continuously expanded in line with the city’s development following the so-called finger plan adopted in 1947. The trams still ran in the city’s streets, but this ceased in 1972, when buses and cars took over the traffic.

The expansion continued through the latter half of the 20th century when new major projects were adopted. This included, for example, the brand new Ørestad and the construction of the Copenhagen subway, whose first line was opened in 2002.

In 2000, Copenhagen became land-fixed with the former Danish areas in present-day Sweden. The Øresund Bridge was built, and the development of Copenhagen and the Øresund area as a central part of the Baltic Sea region was thereby started; and Copenhagen’s position is thus the capital’s historic position up through the first centuries of the city.