Denmark

Before I mention anything, this is a very short video clip about the geography of Denmark which I found very useful and informative when writing this post. Credit to the geography now channel!

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Denmark is the southern most nordic country. It effectively connects Scandinavia with mainland Europe. Denmark is made up of 1419 Island, 74 of which are inhabited. The largest is Sjælland. The capital city is Copenhagen(Køvenhavn).

Denmark is an extremely flat country with its highest point being a mere 170m above sea level. Only 13% of its land is forested and the rest being used for agriculture. The majority of the land is rolling hills, sandy beaches and small green island which people tend to go to for camping holidays. Unlike the rest of the nordic countries, it rarely snows in Denmark. It does get cold enough but it doesn't actually snow because of the pressure systems.

The population of Denmark is roughly 5.7 million people. It is one of the most highly taxed countries in the world and was also shown to be the 'happiest' country in the world several times in recent years.  This was however stolen by Norway this year. The background cultural context of Denmark, like many of the other Nordic countries is vikings.

In Denmark people speak Danish. Denmark is where all of the northern germanic and germanic languages are thought to have been born. Originally people would've spoken proto-germanic around 300BCE, then moving onto proto-norse and then eventually onto old norse, east and west norse and gutnish and then further splitting into all of the modern northern germanic languages (Danish,  Swedish, Norweigan, Gutnish(spoken on the island of Gotland to an extent), Faroese and Icelandic). All of these languages are relatively intelligible with each other depending on which dialects you encounter. There is an old saying that many Swedish and Norwegian people will hold close to their hearts, 'Swedish and Norwegian sound like fairies are speaking, but that danish sounds like someone speaking with a potato stuffed down their throats. I have no comment on this. It is also perhaps worth mentioning that LEGO and loudspeakers were invented in Denmark.

Denmark has been part of many interesting projects, such as 'Øresundsbron' the oresunds bridge connecting Sweden with Copenhagen. This has greatly boosted the local economies by greatly shortening the commute between Malmö(Sweden) and Copenhagen. Getting to Denmark is fairly simple, one can fly to Copenhagen or take a train from anywhere in Europe. The airport in Copenhagen has excellent transport links to Sweden, Copenhagen city centre(by metro, train, bus or taxi) as well as the rest of Denmark.

Denmark is a country which I have visited on many occasions and would highly recommend that you all travel there.
Thanks!