The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

SCANDINAVIA.CHAPTER I.jEEPER though she is of the Baltic portals, and mistress of Icelandand the Faroer, besides the vast uninhabited Greenland wastes andthree West India islands, Denmark is nevertheless nothing morethan an historic fragment.Of all European states it has the smallestpopulation next to Greece, ranking even after the Hellenic world,if account be taken of those of kindred stock and speech living beyond the politicalbounds of the respective countries. The Greeks of the Archipelago, of Thessaly,Epirus, Thrace, Macedonia, and Asia Minor are far more numerous than those ofthe kingdom itself, whereas the Danes, pent up within their narrow limits, haveonly a small group of kinsmen beyond the frontiers. And even these remainhenceforth deprived of their national autonomy, notwithstanding the stipulationsof a solemn treaty, which Germany now feels justified in violating.A mere remnant of a vanished land, formerly connecting Scandinavia withNorth Germany, Denmark has been in its history constantly associated withboth countries. She formerly possessed extensive tracts on the Baltic seaboard,including Esthonia itself. In 1397 the union of Kalmar placed her at the headof the Scandinavian political system, and she possessed Norway till the year 1814.South of the Baltic various lands, since become German, also belonged to her, andtillrecently the German provinces of Holstein, South Schleswig, and Laueiiburgformed an integral part of the monarchy.No other European people have made such extensive conquests as the Danes,for it was from Jylland (Jutland) and the islands, no less than from the NorwegianNew World, discovered byand Swedish fiords, that the terrible Norsemen issued forth. They settled everywhereas conquerors—in the British Isles, on the coast of France, the Mediterraneanseaboard, and even the northern shores of thethe Scandinavians long before the days of Columbus. Denmark must have become