Denmark

Denmark is a country in the north of Europe.

The sea is almost all around it. It has one big piece of land and many islands. The land is low and flat. The capital city is Copenhagen.

Denmark is in northern Europe. Its biggest part is Jutland, a peninsula that points north from Germany, and to the east lie more than 400 islands. The largest island, Zealand, is where most of Copenhagen, the capital, stands.

Denmark is very low: on average the land is no more than 30 meters above the sea. Its only land border is a short one with Germany, 68 kilometers long. Everywhere else, Denmark meets the sea. Along with Norway and Sweden, it is part of the region called Scandinavia. About 6 million people live there.

Denmark consists of the Jutland (Jylland) peninsula, which makes up more than two-thirds of its land, and an archipelago of more than 400 islands, the largest being Zealand (7,031 km²), Vendsyssel-Thy and Funen (2,984 km²); the total area is about 42,925 square kilometers. Its only land boundary is the 68 km border with Germany; all its other frontiers are maritime.

Statistics Denmark counted 6,038,638 residents on 1 September 2026. The Kingdom of Denmark also encompasses the Faroe Islands and Greenland in the North Atlantic, each distinct in history, language and culture; home rule was granted to the Faroes in 1948 and to Greenland in 1979, while foreign policy and defense remain under Danish control. Denmark is a constitutional monarchy: under the constitution of 5 June 1953, the monarch is the ceremonial head of state and a single chamber, the Folketing, of up to 179 members, makes the laws.

Copenhagen is the biggest city in Denmark.

It has towers, canals and lots of bike paths. Kronborg is a big old castle by the sea. A long bridge and a tunnel link Denmark to Sweden.

Copenhagen, the capital, lies mostly on the island of Zealand. Aarhus, in eastern Jutland, is the second-largest city, followed by Odense on Funen. In Copenhagen harbor stands The Little Mermaid, a bronze statue from 1913 based on a story by Hans Christian Andersen.

Kronborg Castle, begun in 1574, guards the narrow strait between Denmark and Sweden. Since 2000, the Øresund Link has crossed that strait with a bridge, an artificial island and a tunnel. At Jelling in Jutland, two stones carved with runes, a kind of old writing, stand beside burial mounds and a church.

Copenhagen lies on the islands of Zealand and Amager and had 672,666 residents in its municipality on 1 September 2026; Århus, Odense, Ålborg and Esbjerg follow. UNESCO describes Kronborg at Helsingør (inscribed 2000) as a Renaissance castle begun in 1574 on a strategic site commanding the Sound, its defenses strengthened in the late 17th century and intact today; it is world-renowned as Elsinore, the setting of Shakespeare's Hamlet.

The Jelling burial mounds, runic stones and church (inscribed 1994) document the Christianization of the Danes in the mid-10th century, and the five Viking-Age ring fortresses, among them Trelleborg, Fyrkat and Aggersborg, were built between about 970 and 980 CE to a single geometric design (inscribed 2023). The Øresund Link, opened on 1 July 2000, joins Denmark and Sweden with about 8 km of bridge, a 4 km artificial island and 4 km of tunnel.

Denmark is low and flat.

Its highest hill is not very high at all. Sand dunes line part of the coast. Big flat sands appear when the sea goes out.

Denmark's land was shaped by ice. During the last ice age, a huge ice sheet covered it again and again, and it melted away for the last time about 10,000 years ago. It left low, rolling hills of soil in the east and flat sands and gravels in the west, washed out by meltwater.

The highest hills, in east-central Jutland, reach only about 170 meters. The longest river, the Gudenå, flows 158 kilometers. In the southwest lies the Wadden Sea, where huge sand and mud flats appear at low tide. Winters are cold, with a February average of about 0 °C, and summers are mild.

The Weichsel glaciation shaped Denmark's contours, retreating north for the last time about 10,000 years ago. An ice-front line runs from Nissum Fjord east toward Viborg and then south toward Flensburg: west of it lie flat meltwater sands and gravels, east of it fertile loam plains and moraine hills. Senonian chalk about 100 million years old is exposed at Stevns Klint and Møns Klint, while on Bornholm Precambrian granites more than 570 million years old are among the oldest rocks on Earth's surface. A 2005 survey by the national mapping agency, the National Museum and the University of Copenhagen found the highest natural ground at Møllehøj, 170.86 m, near Ejer Bavnehøj in east-central Jutland; a Bronze Age burial mound on nearby Yding Skovhøj reaches 172.54 m.

The Gulf Stream's North Atlantic Current keeps February, the coldest month, at about 0 °C, roughly 7 °C above the world average for that latitude; July averages about 16 °C, and yearly precipitation of about 635 mm ranges from 810 mm in southwestern Jutland to 405 mm in parts of the archipelago. The Danish part of the Wadden Sea belongs to what UNESCO calls the largest unbroken system of intertidal sand and mud flats in the world (inscribed 2009, with its boundaries significantly changed in 2014). About one-tenth of the land is forested.

Seals live in the sea by the coast.

Roe deer live in the countryside. Red deer with big antlers live in the forests. Hedgehogs and hares live in Denmark too.

Roe deer live in the Danish countryside in growing numbers, and red deer with large antlers live in the forests of Jutland. Smaller mammals include hares and hedgehogs. More than 300 kinds of birds have been seen in Denmark, and about half of them nest there.

The Wadden Sea is home to harbor seals, gray seals and harbor porpoises, small sea mammals. In the seas around Denmark, cod, herring and plaice are plentiful. Long ago, moose, brown bears, wild boars and aurochs, a wild ox that is now extinct, lived in Denmark, but they died out as people spread and farmed the land more and more.

After the ice age, large herds of elk (moose), brown bears, wild boars and aurochs lived in Denmark; Britannica explains that they died out under the pressure of human expansion and intensive agriculture. Today roe deer occupy the countryside in growing numbers, large-antlered red deer live in Jutland's forests, and hares and hedgehogs are common. More than 300 bird species have been recorded, about half of them breeding in the country, but storks, common summer residents in the early 20th century, are now almost extinct.

UNESCO lists the harbor seal, gray seal and harbor porpoise among the marine mammals of the Wadden Sea, one of the last large intertidal ecosystems where natural processes still work largely undisturbed. Cod, herring and plaice are abundant in Danish waters and form the basis of a large fishing industry.

About 6 million people live in Denmark.

Most people speak Danish. Lots of people ride bikes, even in rain and snow. Children often learn to ride before they start school. Open sandwiches called smørrebrød have toppings like fish.

About 6 million people live in Denmark, and most of them live in towns and cities. Danish is the official language. It is so close to Norwegian that speakers can understand each other, especially in writing. Many people also speak English, and Turkish, Arabic and German are spoken too.

Cycling is a big part of daily life. People bike to work, to the shops and to meet friends in sunshine, rain or snow, and Copenhagen has about 400 kilometers of cycle paths. Children usually learn to ride before they start school. Smørrebrød are open sandwiches topped with fish, sliced meats or salads.

The vast majority of people in Denmark live in urban areas, though more than one-tenth still live in the countryside. Danish, a North Germanic language, is mutually intelligible with Norwegian, especially in writing; many educated or urban Danes speak a second language, particularly English, and Turkish, Arabic and German are among the minority languages. Guest workers from Turkey, Pakistan and Yugoslavia arrived in the 1960s, followed later by refugees from the former Yugoslavia, Iraq and Somalia. Most people are at least nominal members of the Evangelical Lutheran state church (Lutheranism has been the official religion since 1536), alongside a growing Muslim minority and many who are not religious.

The official Denmark.dk site describes cycling as one of the primary forms of transport, with about 400 km of separated cycle paths in Copenhagen and 'cycle superhighways' in the larger urban areas. The University of Copenhagen dates from 1479. Farms raise dairy cattle, pigs and poultry, and smørrebrød, open-faced sandwiches with fish, meats or salads, are a Scandinavian tradition.