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 The Kingdom of Denmark is the smallest and southernmost of the Nordic countries. It is also the oldest. Located north of its only land neighbour, Germany, southwest of Sweden, and south of Norway, it is located in northern Europe. From a cultural point of view, Denmark belongs to the family of Scandinavian countries although not located on the Scandinavian Peninsula. The national capital is Copenhagen. Denmark borders both the Baltic and the North Sea. The country consists of a large peninsula, Jutland, which borders northern Germany, plus a large number of islands, most notably Zealand, Funen, Vendsyssel-Thy, Lolland, and Bornholm as well as hundreds of minor islands often referred to as the Danish Archipelago. Denmark has historically controlled the approach to the Baltic Sea, and these waters are also known as the Danish straits. Denmark has been a constitutional monarchy since 1849 and a parliamentary democracy since 1901. Denmark became a member of the European Economic Community (now the European Union) in 1973. The Kingdom of Denmark also encompasses two off-shore territories, Greenland and the Faroe Islands, both of which enjoy wideranging home rule. The Danish monarchy is the oldest existing monarchy in Europe, and the national flag is the oldest state flag in continuous use. 
Hans Christian Ørsted (August 14, 1777 – March 9, 1851) was a Danish physicist and chemist, influenced by the thinking of Immanuel Kant. He is best known for discovering the relationship between electricity and magnetism known as electromagnetism. From 1806, Ørsted was a professor at the University of Copenhagen. He was instrumental in the founding of the university's Faculty of Science shortly before his death. In the 1960's the main building complex of the university's new science campus was named in his honor. Ørsted was the driving force behind the founding of the Technical University of Denmark in 1829 and served as its first director. The present-day department of applied electronics is named Ørsted·DTU in his honor. Recently selected: Grundtvig - Canute the Great - Jacob Riis  Jacob Riis was the third of fifteen children born to Niels Riis, schoolteacher and editor of the local Ribe newspaper, and Carolina Riis, a homemaker. Riis was influenced both by his stern father, whose school Riis took delight in disrupting, and by the authors he read, among whom Charles Dickens and James Fenimore Cooper were his favorites. At age eleven, Riis's younger brother drowned. Riis would be haunted for the rest of his life by the images of his drowning brother and of his mother staring at his brother's empty chair at the dinner table. At twelve, Riis amazed all who knew him when he donated all the money he received for Christmas to a poor Ribe family, at a time when money was scarce for anyone. When Riis was sixteen, he fell in love with Elisabeth Gortz. To his dismay, Riis was forced to seek work in Copenhagen as a carpenter without her. 
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Have a look at WikiProject Denmark, WikiProject Faroe Islands, WikiProject Greenland and WikiProject Norse history and culture
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