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Denmark-Norway as a Potential World Power in the
Early Seventeenth Century
Mr Jnsson
Itinerario / Volume 33 / Issue 02 / July 2009, pp 17 - 27
DOI: 10.1017/S0165115300003077, Published online: 11 January 2010
Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0165115300003077
How to cite this article:
Mr Jnsson (2009). Denmark-Norway as a Potential World Power in the Early
Seventeenth Century. Itinerario, 33, pp 17-27 doi:10.1017/S0165115300003077
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Denmark-Norway as a Potential World Power
in the Early Seventeenth Century
MR JNSSON*
On 2 January 1625, the English ambassador Robert Anstruther met with King
Christian IV of Norway and Denmark and requested his participation in a union of
Protestant states against Emperor Ferdinand II and the Catholic League in
Germany. Within three days, King Christian proposed to contribute five thousand
soldiers for one year, as part of an army of almost thirty thousand men.
1
In early
June, despite opposition from the Danish Council of State, reluctant to put a huge
amount of money into foreign affairs, Christian decided to join what he called the
war for the defence of Lower Saxony. He then headed an army of mercenaries
southwards through Lower Saxony, secured all crossings over the river Weser and
prepared to confront the Catholic forces.
2
On 29 November, it was decided that
Denmark would be in charge of military operations in Northern Germany, whereas
England and the United Provinces would provide a monthly subsidy.
3
The political
and military prospects for Denmark were excellent, to say the least. It had the fourth
strongest navy in Europe (after Spain and the two new allies), and only a few years
before the Danish warships had been described by a French observer as merveilles
de locan. A small standing army of two regiments had recently been established
and Denmark was the fourth European state to do so after France, Spain and the
neighbouring Sweden.
4
In this article I will argue that the promising political position gained by the
Danish monarchy in the 1620s was to a great extent based on its struggle to secure
the hegemony over the North Atlantic, as English, Dutch, French, and Spanish
whaling ships started hunting off the recently discovered Spitsbergen and near the
coasts of Northern Norway and Iceland. This was achieved by sending warships to
the North, by mounting whaling expeditions, and not least by negotiating on an
equal footing with Dutch and English authorities. I do not claim that those events
were more important in concrete terms than the intermittent wars with Sweden, the
control of the Sound and the Baltic trade, or Christian IVs incessant efforts to assert
his will in Northern Germany; but they did have more influence than scholars usu-
ally acknowledge.
5
Even more importantly, the experience gained in the faraway
North nurtured an increasingly global outlook that led to Danish colonial ventures
in Asia, Africa and America in the centuries to comesmall in scale, perhaps, but
rich with possibilities.
Itinerario volume XXXIII (2009) number 2
17
Dutch explorers found Spitsbergen in June 1596 but were not specifically
looking for it and thus continued to the east, famously spending the winter in
Novaja Semlja.
6
In 1607, Henry Hudson and others on behalf of the Muscovy
Company came close to Spitsbergen seeing many whales and in the following
years the company sent several whaling expeditions.
7
The news spread and both a
Dutch and Spanish Basque ship made its way to the area.
8
Consequently, on
30 March 1613, the extremely competitive Muscovy Company obtained a charter
from King James I that excluded other nations from hunting for whales at
Spitsbergen. It then sent seven ships, one of them armed, while merchants in
Amsterdam sent two more ships; in addition, another five French ships as well as
eight or more Spanish Basque ships joined in the competition. Basque whalers had
been active off Newfoundland since the 1540s but the whale stocks were almost
depleted and only a few ships had gone there for some years. At Spitsbergen, the
English chased all other ships away (except the ship from Saint Jean de Luz that
had an English licence) and confiscated what had been caught.
9
On their return trip
the French and Spanish ships went to the north-western part of Iceland and caught
a few whales. The Dutch captains, as they returned, claimed compensation from
English authorities for what had been confiscated. Faced with English claims to
monopoly, French and Spanish Basque ships went to Iceland in 1614 instead of
going to Spitsbergen again.
10
The Dutch, however, reacted by putting together a
company, the Noordsche Compagnie, and claimed monopoly at Spitsbergen just
as the English had done. The new company sent a fleet of fourteen ships to
Spitsbergen, accompanied by warships. They were far superior to the English, who
consequently agreed on a division of the hunting grounds. No other ships were to
be allowed.
11
During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the sovereignty of the Danish monar-
chy in the North Atlantic had repeatedly been challenged and it had not managed
to keep English and German merchants and fishers away from Iceland and the
Faroe Islands. In the last decades of the sixteenth century, English and Dutch
adventurers added to the pressure as they strove to find the northeast passage to
China but settled for lucrative trade with Russians instead. King Frederik II of
Denmark reacted by requiring that all ships should get a licence to sail to the North
Atlantic and this came to be respected as a general rule. Danish warships repeat-
edly intercepted English ships that did not have a licence and interminable negoti-
ations took place. In 1602, a Danish trade monopoly was established in Iceland and
three years later an expedition was sent to recover Danish-Norwegian rights in
Greenland.
12
At first, Spitsbergen was thought to be part of Greenland and is often called by
that name in the sourcesGroland, Grynland, Groenland. When it became known
that Spitsbergen consisted of separate islands, both the English and the Dutch
claimed to have found them. The Danish monarchy, however, had undisputed sov-
ereignty over Greenland since medieval times and thus also, in its own view, over
Spitsbergen. The outcome was a fierce dispute between Denmark, England and the
United Provinces. In January 1615, King James of England and Scotland, whose
wife Anne was King Christian IVs sister, sent Robert Anstruther to Copenhagen to
insist on an English whaling monopoly off the coast of Northern Norway, and
offered payment instead. King James did not acknowledge Danish rights over
MR JNSSON 18
Spitsbergen and claimed that as the Danes had no interest in whaling ventures they
could just as well help the English in excluding the French, the Dutch, and the
Spanish. King Christian and the State Council, in agreement for once, rejected the
proposal on 5 April.
13
The Danish monarchy easily upheld its authority in Iceland and Northern Norway.
French and Spanish whalers came to Iceland in the summer of 1614 but also to
Northern Norway and had their base at Kjelvik on Magery close to Nordkapp.
There was also a Scottish-French whaling expedition in the area.
14
These ships paid
their dues to local authorities. Danish interests were also pursued by direct partici-
pation in whaling ventures. In 1614 two merchants of Bergen and one from
Copenhagen got a whaling licence for Northern Norway and were allowed to hire
two or three foreign specialists, which meant Basques. The three men joined forces
with merchants in Amsterdam, some of whom took part in the Nordschee
Compagnie, and fitted out four ships for whaling in the summer of 1615.
15
The wish to control northern waters is clearly expressed in two royal decrees of
30 April and 1 May 1615. The first one concerned Basque whalers who had chased
some inhabitants of Iceland from their homes the summer before. If they returned
they were to be caught, the ships taken and the men, if necessary, killed.
16
With the
second letter, King Christian sent two warships to Northern Norway under the com-
mand of Jrgen Daa in order to catch foreign whalers that did not have a royal
licence.
17
Two Spanish ships were taken in Kjelvik and two French ships in
Tmmervik. They had indeed paid their dues to local authorities but that was not
sufficient anymore and a royal licence was needed. One of the French ships was set
free but the others were brought to Copenhagen, where the second French ship
was released. The catch of the Spanish Basques was confiscated as compensation
for damage done in Iceland the year before, the ships withheld and the crews
ordered to stay. The captains must have written to San Sebastin, and two of the
owners hurried to London and asked the Spanish ambassador for help. He got
Queen Anne to write a letter to her brother in Denmark, asking him to release the
ships, and wrote another one himself. The ship-owners arrived in Copenhagen in
February 1616.
18
King Christian did not stop with the Jrgen Daa expedition. In a parallel move,
on 14 May 1615, he granted two merchants of Copenhagen the right to fit out a
ship for whaling off Northern Norway. They were also provided with a corsair licence
to take foreign ships that did not have a royal permit for hunting whales. Three ships
from La Rochelle were taken close to Troms. It is also known that three English
whalers were off Ingy.
19
Last but not least, on 21 May, three warships led by Gabriel
Kruse were sent to Spitsbergen in order to inspect the whaling grounds. They were
to order all captains to show whether their ship had a licence from King Christian,
and, if this was not the case, pay their dues to the Danish king. English and Dutch
captains of course rejected these claims, but at least they knew that the Danish
monarchy had to be reckoned with, which probably was the main purpose of the
trip.
20
It may have been as a first reaction to the arrival of the two ship-owners from San
Sebastin that King Christian, on 18 February 1616, wrote to the kings of England,
France and Spain, and to Archduke Albert and the States General of the United
Provinces, complaining about foreign whalers off Norway, Iceland, the Faroe
DENMARK-NORWAY AS A POTENTIAL WORLD POWER 19
Islands, and Greenland (that is, Spitsbergen). The rulers were kindly asked to let
their subjects know about this, and as a final point King Christian recalled the
licence for whaling at Spitsbergen given to the English, since they had not been will-
ing to acknowledge his sovereignty there and had even given it a new name. A
condition for further licences was the acceptance of Danish sovereignty.
21
The
English and Dutch, as could be expected, did not agree to the latter part of King
Christians claims, although they accepted his right to prohibit whaling off Iceland,
Norway and the Faroe Islands. King James even claimed, in a letter of 26 April, that
Spitsbergen was his alone. No answers came from Spain, France or Flanders.
The crews of the two ships from San Sebastin (taken in 1615) spent the winter
in Copenhagen and may actually have been hired by Danish whalers in the summer
of 1616. The two ships left the Sound in early October.
22
As compensation for their
losses the owners were allowed to hunt whales for free off Norway during the sum-
mers 1617 and 1618. One of them was partner to a Danish whaling expedition in
1619, with two ships of his own.
23
The owner of the French Basque ship taken in
1615 returned the year after, collaborating with merchants of Copenhagen.
24
No
Spanish ships came to the North after 1619, but Danish collaboration with French
Basques continued at least until 1632.
25
By spring 1616, with a mixture of prohibitions, violence and licences, the Danish
monarchy had managed to secure a monopoly of whaling in Northern Norway and
Iceland. The more lucrative Spitsbergen hunting grounds remained disputed for
three more years. In June 1616 the State Council encouraged King Christian to
adopt a careful attitude towards the Dutch and the English, since they were impor-
tant allies and could only be stopped at Spitsbergen with strong naval action, which
was to be avoided.
26
On 25 October, three Copenhagen entrepreneurs got a licence
for five ships to go whaling in Spitsbergen and on 20 November a Copenhagen
merchant in collaboration with others from Dieppe in France got a licence for one
ship. On 21 April 1617, merchants in Bergen got a licence for an undetermined
number of ships that would go to Spitsbergen.
27
At least one of these expeditions
ran into trouble with English ships, whose captains claimed English monopoly in
the area and confiscated some part of the catch. In a series of letters in September,
King Christian complained to his brother-in-law, King James, who on 22 November
rejected all claims of compensation and insisted that Spitsbergen had been discov-
ered by the English. He decreed, however, that Danish whaling would be tolerated
for the time being, but that King Christians claim to sovereignty would not be
accepted.
28
In February 1618, Jonas Charisius went to London on behalf of King
Christian, who yet again insisted that Greenland and other northern regions had
always belonged to the crown of Norway and that English ships needed to pay a
licence for whaling. King James rejected that claim and suggested instead that
English and Danish whalers should collaborate in keeping other nations away.
29
In 1616 and 1617, Dutch whalers were busy establishing themselves in Jan
Mayen to the south. In the summer of 1618 they returned to Spitsbergen with force
and there was serious trouble, resulting in a tacit agreement of dividing the islands
between England and the United Provinces. Danish ships were at Spitsbergen too
but caught few whales.
30
In 1619, there was further conflict between English and
Dutch whalers at Spitsbergen, commented on a year later by King Christian with a
clear sympathy for his brother-in-law.
31
By the end of 1619, Christian had decided
MR JNSSON 20
to participate in the Spitsbergen whaling with two ships of his own in collaboration
with Johan Braem, a merchant from Hamburg. Four Danish ships left Copenhagen
on 17 May 1619 with more than twenty Basques on board, but caught only nine
whales. The commerce with English whalers was friendly, with music and the blow-
ing of trumpets to an abundance of wine and ale and victuals, as described by an
Icelandic gunner who was present and later wrote his memoirs. He also mentions
a great banquet held by Dutch whalers with Danes and Englishmen present.
32
Danish activities at Spitsbergen were thus accepted and on 15 April 1620, King
Christian suggested to his State Council that a general treaty should be made with
England and the United Provinces. In March 1621 two Danish representatives went
to London and a treaty was signed on 29 April. No agreement was reached on
Spitsbergen until 9 October, however, when King James conceded that subjects of
both kings could hunt for whales as long as the two of them lived, on condition that
Danish ships would not sell their catch in his kingdoms. A few weeks later King
Christian declared himself satisfied with this solution.
33
Even more complicated dis-
cussions led to a general treaty between Denmark and the United Provinces on
30 September, and although there is no specific mention of whaling there seems to
be an understanding that both parties would do what they deemed best.
34
It goes
without saying that an English-Dutch acceptance of Danish sovereignty in the area
was out of the question. That did not change for decades, but there is no reason to
doubt that the Danish monarchy now stood equal to the most powerful states in the
disputed North.
King Christians new position of strength allowed him to realistically think that he
could profit from the colonial trade just as the Dutch and the English had done for
a few decades. The Dutch had dominated Baltic trade for a long time and by 1600
they had replaced the English as leaders in trade with Archangel. Their trade in West
Africa as well as in the Caribbean intensified in the first years of the seventeenth cen-
tury. Dutch merchants had hoped to find a northeast passage to the East Indies by
proceeding to the north of Norway, thus finding Spitsbergen, but when the passage
was not found they sent expeditions to the south of Africa. By 1602, when the
Dutch East Indies Company was founded, no less than sixty-five ships had sailed
from the United Provinces to the East Indies, and during the next two decades an
average of five or six ships went there every year. In 1617, the Dutch had around
twenty fortresses and forty warships in the area, competing with Spanish,
Portuguese, and English merchants.
35
The English East India Company had been
founded in 1600 and the first trading posts established a few years later, but English
merchants and colonizers were also rapidly establishing themselves in the
Caribbean and North America.
36
King Christian wanted to be part of this new arena of opportunities and expan-
sion.
37
However, instead of the inexorable and worldwide ventures of his competi-
tors at Spitsbergen, Danish efforts resulted in a series of misadventures. A Danish
East India Company was founded on 17 March 1616 on the initiative of two Dutch
merchants in Copenhagen. King Christian contributed greatly to its funds. In
November 1617 a Dutch envoy of the emperor of Ceylon arrived in Copenhagen
and asked for help against the Portuguese. Detailed agreements were signed on
30 March and 2 August 1618. In late November five ships left Copenhagen for the
Indian Ocean, two of them provided by King Christian with soldiers on board and
DENMARK-NORWAY AS A POTENTIAL WORLD POWER 21
the others from the new company. On arrival in Ceylon in May 1619, the ships were
received with less joy than had been predicted by the representative, who had
deceased during the journey. The emperor had no money to pay for his part of the
agreement, but instead, on 21 August 1620, conceded the area of Trinquenamale
to the Danish king, where the Danes started building a fortress. Admiral Ove Gjedde
also had dealings with the Nayka of Tanjore on the Coast of Coromandel, and on
19 November 1620 the Danes were allowed to establish a trading post at Tranque-
bar. When Gjedde came back to Trinquenamale there had been little progress on
the fortress and a ship had been lost. He left for Copenhagen on 1 June 1621 with
a cargo of pepper, leaving twenty men as hostages. It cannot be said that the trip
had been a triumph, and the biased comment of a Dutch agent in nearby
Masulipatam seems fitting: This was the history and the end of the miserable
Danish voyage, full of discord, quarrels, fights and murder.
38
Nonetheless, the
Danes managed to build a fortress in Tranquebar surrounded by handsome walls
and well furnished with bastions at each corner, according to the Icelandic gunner
mentioned before, who was there in 1622-3.
39
Danish expansionist efforts went further. In May 1619, the Norwegian explorer
and navigator Jens Munk had been sent to search for the northwest passage and
was forced to stay the whole winter in Hudson Bay, surviving with only two others.
The Pechora Company for trade with Northern Russia was in function in 1619 and
1620, with great losses.
40
In the fall of 1621, King Christian accepted a proposal of
getting ivory at the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. There were projects on
Guinea in Africa in 1624-5 and the West Indies in 1622-5.
41
Although nothing came
out of any of these projects they could have been the beginning of a promising
colonial empire. King Christians war in Germany stifled these prospects and it soon
became apparent that he stood against superior forces. His army lost the battle of
Lutten in Lower Saxony on 27 August 1626 and a year later things really turned for
the worse with the invasion and occupation of Jutland. In spring 1628 Danish
forces resisted further attacks and even counter-attacked. Ensuing negotiations
allowed King Christian to make peace without being humiliated. A treaty was signed
in Lbeck on 12 May 1629 and Christian ratified it on 3 June. He regained his ter-
ritories and promised not to interfere in German and Imperial affairs anymore.
Denmark was out of the war for good, as historian Paul Douglas Lockhart puts it.
42
England, the United Provinces and France were about to supplant Spain as the
most powerful states in Europe. Denmark was left behind, without allies and not
trusted by anyone. In 1630, Sweden took over the leadership of Protestant powers
in the war and took advantage of its position and strength in December 1643 by
invading Holstein and southern Jutland, and a few weeks later Scania. The peace
agreements signed in Brmsebro in the summer of 1645 marked the end of
Denmark as a great power. As King Frederik III, son of King Christian, in 1657 ven-
tured to regain lost territories, things went from bad to worse and Denmark lost
Scania to Sweden.
43
This is well known, but these disasters have been allowed to overshadow the
few years when the Danish monarchy could have become an important participant
in the European expansion. The successful consolidation of its political hegemony
in the North Atlantic from 1614 onwards gave King Christian IV enough confidence
to think of himself as an international figure. Whaling activities were never more
MR JNSSON 22
than a small fraction of Denmarks economy but their importance lies elsewhere.
The negotiations with England and the United Provinces on Spitsbergen strength-
ened King Christian as a political player and led him to believe that he was capable
of participating with other aspiring Western world powers in securing important pos-
sessions in regions even more exotic than the far North. These dreams were thwart-
ed by military defeats closer to home, so to speak, in the years 1627-58.
The only site of permanent Danish presence on other continents was at
Tranquebar. In the years 1622-39, nineteen ships went there from Copenhagen and
five returned, the last one in 1643.
44
However, by the late 1650s Denmark felt strong
enough to renew its attention towards the larger world and in a way to resume King
Christians colonial ambitions. The fort of Frederiksberg on the Gold Coast of West
Africa was established in 1659, after some years of Danish trading in the area.
45
Sweden, in fact, had put up a trading station at Cabo Corso on the Gold Coast in
1649 but lost it to the Dutch in 1663, just as it eight years earlier had lost its small
settlement in Delaware, founded in 1638.
46
The Swedes subsequently gave up all
ideas of world expansion, but the Danes did not. The island of St. Thomas in the
Caribbean was settled in the 1670s and five years later a West Indies Company was
founded, expanded to include Guinea in 1674.
47
A new East India Company was
founded in 1670, reinforcing Danish presence at Tranquebar, and hoping to
expand, for instance in 1675 and 1677 by asking, without success, the Spanish
government to grant a licence to trade in the Philippines.
48
Modest expansion in the
Caribbean resulted in the taking over of St. John in 1718 and the buying of St. Croix
from France in 1733, despite protests from Spain. In 1741, the Danish ambassa-
dor in Madrid even suggested that the Danish government should try to acquire the
nearby island of Puerto Rico, almost abandoned by the Spanish, as it would supply
infinite commercial advantages to Denmark.
49
There was indeed reason to be opti-
mistic, and the Kingdom of Denmark-Norway (finally) had established itself as a
colonial player, although on a diminutive scale, almost invisible compared to the
daring feats of the Dutch and the English.
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DENMARK-NORWAY AS A POTENTIAL WORLD POWER 25
MR JNSSON 26
Notes
* Mr Jnsson (b. 1959) is Professor of History
at the University of Iceland. His publications
in English include: The Expulsion of the Last
Muslims from Spain in 1609-1614: The
Destruction of an Islamic Periphery". Journal
of Global History 2:2 (2007): 195-212;
Arnas Magnus Islandus: A Visiting Scholar
in Leipzig, 1694-96. Lias 26 (1999): 213-32;
and Defining Incest by the Word of God:
Northern Europe 1520-1740. History of
European Ideas 18 (1994): 853-67.
1 Tandrup, Mod triumf eller tragedie, vol. 1,
462-7.
2 Lockhart, Denmark, 1513-1660, 165-6.
3 Lockhart, Denmark in the Thirty Years War,
139-41; Danmark-Norges Traktater, vol. 3,
620-45.
4 Tandrup, Mod triumf eller tragedie, vol. 1,
74; Lockhart, Denmark in the Thirty Years
War, 65-66, 128; Lockhart, Denmark, 1513-
1660, 105; Dansk udenrigspolitisk historie,
vol. 1, 353.
5 Tandrup, Mod triumf eller tragedie, vol. 1,
89-90; Lockhart, Denmark in the Thirty
Years War, 77, 81; Lockhart, Denmark,
1513-1660, 3, 47, 104, 109, 149.
6 Hacquebord, In Search of Het Behouden
Huys, 248-56.
7 Purchas his Pilgrimes, vol. 3, 571, 704, 709-
11.
8 Early Dutch and English Voyages, 3-4;
Dalgrd, Dansk-Norsk Hvalfangst, 34.
9 Early Dutch and English Voyages, 6-7, 20;
Barkham, Shipowning, Shipbuilding and
Trans-Atlantic Fishing in Spanish Basque
Ports, 253-58; Conway, No Mans Land, 62;
Resolutin der Staten-Generaal...1613-
1616, 35; De Jong, Geschiedenis van de
oude Nederlandse Walvisvaart, 25. On whal-
ing off Newfoundland, see Huxley, Los vas-
cos y las pesqueras transatlnticas, 26-164;
Barkham, French Basque New Found
Land Entrepreneurs, 17-24; Turgeon,
Pches basques du Labourd en Atlantique
nord, 165-70.
10 Jnsson, Adragandi og sta
Spnverjavga, 72, 77-80; Resolutin der
Staten-Generaal...1613-1616, 106.
11 Dalgrd, Dansk-Norsk Hvalfangst, 37-39.
12 Gunnarsson, Monopoly Trade and
Economic Stagnation, 53-54; Thorlksson,
Sjrn og siglingar, 25-43, 55-64, 69-73,
280-82; Harbsmeier, Bodies and Voices
from Ultima Thule, 37-47; Probst, Christian
4.s flde, 95-96.
13 Dalgrd, Dansk-Norsk Hvalfangst, 43-44;
Danmark-Norges Traktater, vol. 3, 369;
Kong Christian den fjerdes egenhndige
breve 1589-1625, 86.
14 Dalgrd, Dansk-Norsk Hvalfangst, 46 n. 16,
49 n. 31.
15 Ibid., 58, 67-69.
16 Kancelliets Brevbger 1609-1615, 792-3.
This actually happened, although not
because there was conflict during the whaling
season. Three ships from San Sebastin were
crushed by ice as they were about to leave
Reykjarfjrur in the northwest of Iceland on
the night of 21 September 1615. The 80 men
inspired fear and 31 of them were killed by
locals; see Einarsson, Hvalveiar vi sland,
27-31; Edvardsson and Rafnsson, Basque
Whaling Around Iceland, 5-7.
17 Kancelliets brevbger 1609-1615, 793;
Probst, Christian 4.s flde, 135-7.
18 State Archives, Copenhagen. Kongehusets
og rigets arkiv D 11-12. Island. Supplement
II, 14: Biscayer Sache, belangend den
Walfischfang, 1615. The folder contains let-
ters from the owners and detailed lists of what
was confiscated. I have written on this in
some detail in Icelandic; see Jnsson,
Adragandi og sta Spnverjavga, 66-
76. On Sarmiento de Acua, later Conde de
Gondomar, see Garca Hernn, Polticos de
la monarqua hispnica, 649-50.
19 Dalgrd, Dansk-Norsk Hvalfangst, 50-51,
259.
20 Ibid., 46-48; Kancelliets brevbger 1609-
1615, 801-2.
21 State Archives, Copenhagen. Tyske Kancelli
Udenrigske Afdeling. Alm. Del 1, 10. Kopibog
Latina 1616-1631, 1r-3r; Alm. Del 54.
Auslndische Registrant 1614-1616, 410r-
412v; Danmark-Norges Traktater, vol. 3,
370; Rstad, Kongens strmme, 102-5.
22 Dalgrd, Dansk-Norsk Hvalfangst, 50, 73-
74.
23 State Archives, Copenhagen. Tyske Kancelli
Udenrigske Afdeling. Alm. Del 1, 10. Kopibog
Latina 1616-1631, 3r-6r; Alm. Del 54.
Auslndische Registrant 1614-1616, 422v-
426r; Dalgrd, Dansk-Norsk Hvalfangst,
104.
24 Dalgrd, Dansk-Norsk Hvalfangst, 74.
25 Ibid., 394.
26 Kancelliets brevbger 1616-1620, 22-23;
Dalgrd, Dansk-Norsk Hvalfangst, 54-55.
27 Kancelliets brevbger 1616-1620, 177, 187;
Norske rigsregistranter IV, 605, 607, 610,
626; cf. Dalgrd, Dansk-Norsk Hvalfangst,
DENMARK-NORWAY AS A POTENTIAL WORLD POWER 27
78-79.
28 Dalgrd, Dansk-Norsk Hvalfangst, 83-88;
Rstad, Kongens strmme, 107-17.
29 Dalgrd, Dansk-Norsk Hvalfangst, 89-90;
Murdoch, Britain, Denmark-Norway, 32-33.
30 Hacquebord, Schepen naar Spitsbergen en
Jan Mayen, 153-6; Conway, No Mans Land,
106-23; Dalgrd, Dansk-Norsk Hvalfangst,
92-94.
31 Kong Christian den fjerdes egenhndige
breve 1589-1625, 176.
32 Dalgrd, Dansk-Norsk Hvalfangst, 98-103,
107, 110; The Life of the Icelander Jn
lafsson, vol. 1, 152-3, 160.
33 Danmark-Norges Traktater, vol. 3, 373-9,
387-9; Tandrup, Mod triumf eller tragedie,
vol. 1, 457.
34 Danmark-Norges Traktater, vol. 3, 506-15;
Dalgrd, Dansk-Norsk Hvalfangst, 127;
Tandrup, Mod triumf eller tragedie, vol. 1,
481.
35 Israel, Dutch Primacy in World Trade, 43-44,
61-62, 67-68, 102-3; Bernal, Holanda y la
carrera de Indias, 647-56; The Dutch
Factories in India, 1-18; Dijk, Seventeenth-
century Burma and the Dutch East India
Company, 55-71; cf. Cook, Matters of
Exchange,180-7.
36 Lenman, Englands Colonial Wars, 169-76,
184-88, 220-30; Chakrabarty, Anglo-Mughal
Commercial Relations, 3-7, 25-37, 49-54.
37 Lockhart, Denmark, 1513-1660, 133-4, 137-
8.
38 Feldbk, The Danish Trading Companies of
the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,
206; Olsen, Dansk Ostindien, 35; Dansk
udenrigspolitisk historie, vol. 1, 394; Lock-
hart, Denmark, 1513-1660, 133-4, 137-8;
The Life of the Icelander Jn lafsson., vol.
2, xix. The agreements, in German, Spanish,
and Portuguese, are published in Danmark-
Norges Traktater, vol. 3, 320-66.
39 The Life of the Icelander Jn lafsson, vol.
2, 109; Memoirs of Jon Olafsson, 51.
40 Probst, Christian 4.s flde, 141-42; Dalgrd,
Det Petsoriske Kompagni, 20-21, 31-32;
Tandrup, Mod triumf eller tragedie, vol. 1,
142.
41 Dalgrd, Dansk-Norsk Hvalfangst, 130-1;
Bro-Jrgensen, Dansk Vestindien, 11;
Nrregaard, Guldkysten, 19-21.
42 Lockhart, Denmark in the Thirty Years War,
148-56, 175-92, 198-212; Parker, The Thirty
Years War, 67-71; Probst, Christian 4.s
flde, 173-80; Danmark-Noregs Traktater,
vol. 4, 42-86.
43 Lockhart, Denmark, 1513-1660, 204-9, 235-
8; Lockhart, Denmark in the Thirty Years
War, 248, 265; Parker, The Thirty Years War,
110-4.
44 Olsen, Dansk Ostindien, 85-174; Gregersen,
Trankebar, 1987, 40-46; Probst, Christian
4.s flde, 193, 205, 208-9.
45 Nrregaard, Guldkysten, 26-48.
46 Dahlgren and Norman, The Rise and Fall of
New Sweden, 45, 55; Novky, Handels-
kompanier och kompanihandel, 76-84, 95-
99, 208-23; Fur, Colonialism in the Margins,
88-89.
47 Gbel, Danish Trade to the West Indies and
Guinea, 21-23; Gbel, The Danish Trading
Companies: Their Organization, Trade and
Shipping 1671-1807, 2-4; Feldbk, The
Danish Trading Companies of the Seven-
teenth and Eighteenth Centuries, 209; Bro-
Jrgensen, Dansk Vestindien, 18-27, 44-46;
Nrregaard, Guldkysten, 84-87.
48 Olsen, Dansk Ostindien, 170-174; Alegre
Peyrn, Las relaciones hispano-danesas,
190, 425.
49 Bro-Jrgensen, Dansk Vestindien, 216-9,
242-3; Alegre Peyrn, Las relaciones hispa-
no-danesas, 406-7, 415-6.