Copenhagen Municipality
Copenhagen Municipality known in English as the Municipality of Copenhagen, located in the Capital Region of Denmark, is the largest of the four municipalities that constitute the City of Copenhagen, the other three being Dragør, Tårnby. The Municipality of Copenhagen constitutes the historical city center and the majority of its landmarks, it is the most populous in the country with a population of 623,404 inhabitants, covers 86.4 square kilometres in area. Copenhagen Municipality is located at the Zealand and Amager islands and surrounds Frederiksberg Municipality on all sides; the strait of Øresund lies to the east. The city of Copenhagen has grown far beyond the municipal boundaries from 1901, when Frederiksberg Municipality was made an enclave within Copenhagen Municipality; the municipal seat of government is the Copenhagen City Hall. The Lord Mayor of Copenhagen is Frank Jensen, since 2010; the relationship between Copenhagen Municipality and the wider city of Copenhagen is one of an administrative unit within a larger city, cf. the City of London or the City of Brussels.
In the Middle Ages, Copenhagen was defined as the area enclosed within the city walls. The city centre lies in the area defined by the old ramparts, which are still referred to as the Fortification Ring and kept as a partial green band around it. In 1856 the ramparts were pulled down allowing for expansion. In 1901 the city expanded to include Amager and Valby, while Frederiksberg became an enclave within the municipality; the Finger Plan in the second half of the 20th century led to expansion outside the municipal boundary along the commuter lines of the S-train and the Lokaltog rail lines going i.e. to Helsingør and Stevns Municipality along the Øresund. The Copenhagen-Ringsted Line will make Køge one of the railway hubs of Eastern Denmark. Road and rail construction is planned to relieve traffic congestion because the narrow 9-9.5 mile isthmus between Roskilde Fjord and Køge Bugt forms a bottleneck. Copenhagen Municipality was one of the three last Danish municipalities not belonging to a county, the others being Frederiksberg Municipality and Bornholm.
On 1 January 2007, the municipality lost its county privileges and became part of the Capital Region of Denmark. Copenhagen Municipality is a political division covering the central city and certain additional areas, it stretches east to the waterfront. Neighboring municipalities are Gentofte and Herlev to the north, Rødovre and Hvidovre to the west, Tårnby to the south; the City Hall Square is the old centre of the city, from which an old shopping street leads northeast to Kongens Nytorv, laid out in the seventeenth century. Christiansborg Palace, which houses the Danish parliament, is located on the islet of Slotsholmen; the municipality is divided into ten administrative and tax districts.: The suffix -bro in the names Østerbro, Nørrebro and Amagerbro should not be confused with the Danish word for bridge, bro. The term is thought to be an abbreviation or short form of the Danish word brolagt meaning "paved", referring to the roads paved with cobblestones leading to the city's former gates.
Historic population. The two figures for 1 February 1901 are before and after the municipality annexed some nearby parishes; the apparent decline since the mid-1900s are due to the figures not including the suburban and urban areas - notably Frederiksberg - outside Copenhagen municipality. With the exception of 2005, which saw a decrease of more than 1,000 people, the population of the municipality has been increasing since 1992 after having decreased from 1950 to 1992. Note; the two population numbers given for 1901 are the municipality's population before annexation and following annexation of neighboring municipalities, which in the process made Frederiksberg municipality an enclave within the municipality of Copenhagen. Copenhagen Municipality is distinct from the wider Copenhagen urban area; the seat of Copenhagen's municipal council is the Copenhagen City Hall. The council is chaired by the Lord Mayor—currently Frank Jensen—who oversees the civic duties of the fifty-five representatives of the council.
The council meets every other week at 17:30 on a Thursday. They discuss a range of issues including labour and employment, business growth, international cooperation and IT, urban planning and construction, young and disabled peoples' issues and traffic, with a central focus on making the city sustainable and meeting environmental and health targets. All members of the council are elected every four years. In the municipal elections in November 2013, the Social Democrats remained in first place with 27.8% of the vote, while the Red-Green Alliance was in second place with 19.5%. The Social Democrats have claimed the office of mayor for the past 110 years; the municipal government is divided into seven administrative departments: Employment and Integration and Leisure, Health and Care, Finance and Youth, Social Services, Technical and Environmental Administration. It has a finance committee; the annual budget for the city is proposed in August and finalized in October and the annual report is published in May of every year.
The accounting firm Deloitte is responsible for auditing the City of Copenhagen's accounts. All lord mayors of Copenhagen have belonged to the Social Democratic party. In 2009
Bornholm
Bornholm is a Danish island in the Baltic Sea, to the east of the rest of Denmark, south of Sweden, northeast of Germany and north of the westernmost part of Poland. Occupying an area of 588.36 square kilometres, the island had a total population on 1 January 2019 of 39,572. Among Bornholm's chief industrial activities are dairy farming and arts and crafts industries such as glass production and pottery using locally worked clay. Tourism is important during the summer months; the island is home to an large number of Denmark's round churches. The island is known as solskinsøen because of its weather and klippeøen because of its geology, which consists of granite, except along the southern coast; the heat from the summer is stored in the rock formations and the weather is quite warm until October. As a result of the climate, a local variety of the common fig, known as Bornholm's Diamond, can grow locally on the island; the island's topography consists of dramatic rock formations in the north sloping down towards pine and deciduous forests, farmland in the middle and sandy beaches in the south.
Strategically located in the Baltic Sea, Bornholm has been fought over for centuries. It had been ruled by Denmark, but by Sweden and Lübeck, Germany; the ruin of Hammershus, at the northwestern tip of the island, is the largest medieval fortress in northern Europe, testament to the importance of its location. This island and Ertholmene is what remains in Denmark of Skåneland east of Øresund, having been surrendered to Sweden in 1658 but with Bornholm after a local revolt regained in 1660. Many inhabitants speak the Bornholmsk dialect, a dialect of Danish. Bornholmsk retains three grammatical genders, like Icelandic and most dialects of Norwegian, but unlike standard Danish, its phonology includes innovations. This makes the dialect difficult to understand for some Danish speakers. However, Swedish speakers consider Bornholmian to be easier to understand than standard Danish; the intonation resembles the Scanian dialect spoken in nearby Scania, the southernmost province of Sweden. Bornholm Regional Municipality is the local authority covering the entire island.
It is the result of a merger of the five former municipalities on the island and the former Bornholm County. Bornholm Regional Municipality was a county in its own right during its first four years from 1 January 2003 until 31 December 2006. From 1 January 2007 all counties were abolished, Bornholm became part of the Capital Region of Denmark whose main responsibility is the health service; the municipality still retains its name Bornholm Regional Municipality. The island had 21 municipalities until March 1970, of which 6 were 15 parishes. In addition to supervising parish municipalities, the responsibility of the counties in all of Denmark, the market town municipalities of Bornholm were supervised by Bornholm County as well and not by the Interior Ministry as was the case in the rest of Denmark; the seat of the municipal council is Rønne. The voters decided to merge the county with the municipalities in a referendum May 29, 2001, effective from January 1, 2003; the question on the ballot was, "Do you want the six municipal entities of Bornholm to be joined to form one municipal entity as of 1 January 2003?"
73.9% voted in favour. The lowest percentage for the merger was in Nexø municipality, whose mayor, Annelise Molin, a Social Democrat, spoke out against the merger, it was required. Otherwise the merger would have to be abandoned altogether; the six municipal entities had 122 councillors and the new regional municipality would have 27 councillors from the start. They were reduced to 23 from 1 January 2018; the merger was approved in a law by the Folketing 19 March 2002, transferring the tasks of the abolished county and old municipalities to the new Bornholm Regional Municipality. The first regional mayor in the first three years from 2003 until 2005 was Thomas Thors, a physician and member of the Social Democrats and the last mayor of Rønne Municipality for five years from 1998 until 2002. Bjarne Kristiansen, the last mayor of Hasle 2½ years from the summer of 2000 until 2002, representing the local Borgerlisten political party, served as mayor for four years from January 1, 2006 until 2009. From January 1, 2007, Bornholm became a part of the Capital Region of Denmark.
From January 1, 2010 the mayor has been Winni Grosbøll, a high school teacher and a member of the Social Democrats political party. Ferry services connect Rønne to Świnoujście, Sassnitz, Køge, 45 kilometres by road south of Copenhagen, Denmark. Simrishamn has a ferry connection during the summer. There are regular catamaran services between Nexø and the Polish ports of Kołobrzeg, Łeba and Ustka. There are direct bus connections Ystad-Copenhagen, coordinated with the catamaran. There are flights from Bornholm Airport to Copenhagen and other locations; because of
Region Zealand
Region Zealand is the southernmost administrative region of Denmark, established on January 1, 2007 as part of the 2007 Danish Municipal Reform, which abolished the traditional counties and set up five larger regions. Zealand Region has 17 municipalities. Zealand Region consists of the former counties of Roskilde, Storstrøm, Vestsjælland; the region is named after the island of Sjælland, which it shares with the neighbouring Danish Capital Region. Region Zealand includes the adjacent islands of Lolland, Møn. Regions of Denmark Media related to Region Sjælland at Wikimedia Commons
Odin from Lejre
Odin from Lejre is a small cast silver figurine from 900 C. E. depicting an individual on a throne wearing a floor-length dress, an apron, four bead necklaces, a neck ring, a cloak and a rim-less hat. Two birds are seated on the armrests and the back of the throne features the heads of two animals; the figurine has inlay of some gilding. The figure weighs 9 grams; the figurine was found by local amateur archaeologist Tommy Olesen on September 2, 2009, during the Roskilde Museum excavations of a small village at Gammel Lejre near the modern town of Lejre, Denmark. The figurine was unveiled at the Roskilde Museum on November 13, 2009, is now part of the permanent exhibition; the identity of the figure depicted has been the subject of some dispute. The excavator interpreted it as the god Odin sitting on his throne Hliðskjálf, from which he sees into all the worlds; the birds would be the ravens Muninn, who gathered information for Odin. The beast-heads might symbolise Odin's two wolves and Freki. However, some scholars specialising in Viking Age dress and gender representation have pointed out that the person is dressed in female attire, resulting in theories that the figure may in fact represent either the goddesses Frigg or Freyja.
Parallels have been pointed to between "Odin from Lejre" and a silver figure identified as Freyja found in Aska, Sweden. "Odin from Lejre - a unique find at Roskilde Museum". Roskilde Museum. 2009. Archived from the original on 15 January 2010. Official release from Tom. "Odin fra Lejre". ROMU 2009: Årsskrift fra Roskilde Museum. Roskilde: Roskilde Museum: 6–26. ISBN 978-87-88563-75-7. ISSN 0107-928X
Tacitus
Publius Cornelius Tacitus was a senator and a historian of the Roman Empire. The surviving portions of his two major works—the Annals and the Histories—examine the reigns of the emperors Tiberius, Claudius and those who reigned in the Year of the Four Emperors; these two works span the history of the Roman Empire from the death of Augustus, in 14 AD, to the years of the First Jewish–Roman War, in 70 AD. There are substantial lacunae in the surviving texts, including a gap in the Annals, four books long. Tacitus' other writings discuss oratory and the life of his father-in-law, the general responsible for much of the Roman conquest of Britain focusing on his campaign in Britannia. Tacitus is considered to be one of the greatest Roman historians, he lived in what has been called the Silver Age of Latin literature, is known for the brevity and compactness of his Latin prose, as well as for his penetrating insights into the psychology of power politics. Details about his personal life are scarce.
What little is known comes from scattered hints throughout his work, the letters of his friend and admirer Pliny the Younger, an inscription found at Mylasa in Caria. Tacitus was born in 57 to an equestrian family. One scholar's suggestion of Sextus has gained no approval. Most of the older aristocratic families failed to survive the proscriptions which took place at the end of the Republic, Tacitus makes it clear that he owed his rank to the Flavian emperors; the claim that he was descended from a freedman is derived from a speech in his writings which asserts that many senators and knights were descended from freedmen, but this is disputed. His father may have been the Cornelius Tacitus who served as procurator of Germania. There is no mention of Tacitus suffering such a condition, but it is possible that this refers to a brother—if Cornelius was indeed his father; the friendship between the younger Pliny and Tacitus leads some scholars to conclude that they were both the offspring of wealthy provincial families.
The province of his birth remains unknown, though various conjectures suggest Gallia Belgica, Gallia Narbonensis or Northern Italy. His marriage to the daughter of Narbonensian senator Gnaeus Julius Agricola implies that he came from Gallia Narbonensis. Tacitus' dedication to Lucius Fabius Justus in the Dialogus may indicate a connection with Spain, his friendship with Pliny suggests origins in northern Italy. No evidence exists, that Pliny's friends from northern Italy knew Tacitus, nor do Pliny's letters hint that the two men had a common background. Pliny Book 9, Letter 23 reports that, when he was asked if he was Italian or provincial, he gave an unclear answer, so was asked if he was Tacitus or Pliny. Since Pliny was from Italy, some infer that Tacitus was from the provinces Gallia Narbonensis, his ancestry, his skill in oratory, his sympathetic depiction of barbarians who resisted Roman rule have led some to suggest that he was a Celt. This belief stems from the fact that the Celts who had occupied Gaul prior to the Roman invasion were famous for their skill in oratory, had been subjugated by Rome.
As a young man, Tacitus studied rhetoric in Rome to prepare for a career in law and politics. In 77 or 78, he married daughter of the famous general Agricola. Little is known of their domestic life, save that Tacitus loved the outdoors, he started his career under Vespasian, but entered political life as a quaestor in 81 or 82 under Titus. He advanced through the cursus honorum, becoming praetor in 88 and a quindecimvir, a member of the priestly college in charge of the Sibylline Books and the Secular games, he gained acclaim as an orator. He served in the provinces from c. 89 to c. 93, either in command of a legion or in a civilian post. He and his property survived Domitian's reign of terror, but the experience left him jaded and ashamed at his own complicity, giving him the hatred of tyranny evident in his works; the Agricola, chs. 44–45, is illustrative: Agricola was spared those years during which Domitian, leaving now no interval or breathing space of time, but, as it were, with one continuous blow, drained the life-blood of the Commonwealth...
It was not long before our hands dragged Helvidius to prison, before we gazed on the dying looks of Mauricus and Rusticus, before we were steeped in Senecio's innocent blood. Nero turned his eyes away, did not gaze upon the atrocities which he ordered. From his seat in the Senate, he became suffect consul in 97 during the reign of Nerva, being the first of his family to do so. During his tenure, he reached the height of his fame as an orator when he delivered the funeral oration for the famous veteran soldier Lucius Verginius Rufus. In the following year, he wrote and published the Agricola and Germania, foreshadowing the literary endeav
Baroque
The Baroque is a ornate and extravagant style of architecture, painting and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th until the mid-18th century. It preceded the Rococo and Neoclassical styles, it was encouraged by the Catholic Church as a means to counter the simplicity and austerity of Protestant architecture and music, though Lutheran Baroque art developed in parts of Europe as well. The Baroque style used contrast, exuberant detail, deep colour and surprise to achieve a sense of awe; the style began at the start of the 17th century in Rome spread to France, northern Italy and Portugal to Austria and southern Germany. By the 1730s, it had evolved into an more flamboyant style, called rocaille or Rococo, which appeared in France and central Europe until the mid to late 18th century; the English word baroque comes directly from the French, may have been adapted from the Portuguese term barroco, a flawed pearl. Both words are related to the Spanish term berruca; the term did not describe a style of music or art.
Prior to the 18th century, the French baroque and Portuguese barroco were terms related to jewelry, An example from 1531 uses the term to describe pearls in an inventory of Charles V's treasures. The word appears in a 1694 edition of Le Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française, which describes baroque as "only used for pearls that are imperfectly round." A 1728 Portuguese dictionary describes barroco as relating to a "coarse and uneven pearl."The French term for the artistic style may have had roots in the medieval Latin word baroco, a philosophical term, invented in the 13th century by scholastics to describe a complicated type of syllogism, or logical argument. In the 16th century the philosopher Michel de Montaigne associated the term'baroco' with "Bizarre and uselessly complicated." In the 18th century, the term was used to describe music, was not flattering. In an anonymous satirical review of the première of Jean-Philippe Rameau's Hippolyte et Aricie in October 1733, printed in the Mercure de France in May 1734, the critic wrote that the novelty in this opera was "du barocque", complaining that the music lacked coherent melody, was unsparing with dissonances changed key and meter, speedily ran through every compositional device.
In 1762, Le Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française wrote that the term could be used figuratively to describe something "irregular, bizarre or unequal."Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a musician and composer as well as philosopher, wrote in 1768 in the Encyclopédie: "Baroque music is that in which the harmony is confused, loaded with modulations and dissonances. The singing is harsh and unnatural, the intonation difficult, the movement limited, it appears that term comes from the word'baroco' used by logicians."In 1788, the term was defined by Quatremère de Quincy in the Encyclopédie Méthodique as "an architectural style, adorned and tormented". The terms "style baroque" and "musique baroque" appeared in Le Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française in 1835. By the mid-19th century, art critics and historians had adopted the term as a way to ridicule post-Renaissance art; this was the sense of the word as used in 1855 by the leading art historian Jacob Burkhardt, who wrote that baroque artists "despised and abused detail" because they lacked "respect for tradition."Alternatively, a derivation from the name of the Italian painter Federico Barocci has been suggested.
In 1888, the art historian Heinrich Wölfflin published the first serious academic work on the style, Renaissance und Barock, which described the differences between the painting and architecture of the Renaissance and the Baroque. The Baroque style of architecture was a result of doctrines adopted by the Catholic Church at the Council of Trent in 1545–63, in response to the Protestant Reformation; the first phase of the Counter-Reformation had imposed a severe, academic style on religious architecture, which had appealed to intellectuals but not the mass of churchgoers. The Council of Trent decided instead to appeal to a more popular audience, declared that the arts should communicate religious themes with direct and emotional involvement. Lutheran Baroque art developed as a confessional marker of identity, in response to the Great Iconoclasm of Calvinists. Baroque churches were designed with a large central space, where the worshippers could be close to the altar, with a dome or cupola high overhead, allowing light to illuminate the church below.
The dome was one of the central symbolic features of baroque architecture illustrating the union between the heavens and the earth, The inside of the cupola was lavishly decorated with paintings of angels and saints, with stucco statuettes of angels, giving the impression to those below of looking up at heaven. Another feature of baroque churches are the quadratura. Quadratura paintings of Atlantes below the cornices appear to be supporting the ceiling of the church. Unlike the painted ceilings of Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel, which combined different scenes, each with its own perspective, to be looked at one at a time, the Baroque ceiling paintings were created so the viewer on the floor of the church would see the entire ceiling in correct perspective, as if the figures were real; the interiors of baroque churches became more and more ornate in the High Baroque, an
Saxo Grammaticus
Saxo Grammaticus known as Saxo cognomine Longus, was a Danish historian and author. He is thought to have been a clerk or secretary to Absalon, Archbishop of Lund, the main advisor to Valdemar I of Denmark, he is the author of the Gesta Danorum, the first full history of Denmark, from which the legend of Amleth would come to inspire the story of Hamlet by Shakespeare. The Jutland Chronicle gives evidence, it is unlikely he was born before 1150 and it is supposed that his death could have occurred around 1220. His name Saxo was a common name in medieval Denmark; the name Grammaticus was first given to him in the Jutland Chronicle and the Sjælland Chronicle makes reference to Saxo cognomine Longus. He lived in a period of warfare and Danish expansion, led by the Valdemars; the Danes were being threatened by the Wends who were making raids across the border and by sea. Valdemar I had just won a civil war and Valdemar II led an expedition across the Elbe to invade Holstein. Sven Aggesen, a Danish nobleman and author of a earlier history of Denmark than Saxo's, describes his contemporary, Saxo, as his contubernalis meaning tent-comrade.
This gives evidence that Saxo and Sven might have soldiered in the Hird or royal guard since Sven used the word contubernium in reference to them. There is a Saxo to be found on a list of clergy at Lund, where there was a Sven recorded as Archdeacon. There is Dean Saxo who died in 1190. Both arguments, for a secular or religious Saxo, would confirm that he was well educated, as clergy he would have received training in Latin and sons of great men were sent to Paris. Saxo writes that he is himself committed to being a soldier, he tells us that he follows "the ancient right of hereditary service," and that his father and grandfather "were recognized frequenters of your renowned sire's war camp."Saxo's education and ability support the idea that he was educated outside Denmark. Some suggest the title "Grammaticus" refers not to his education but rather his elaborate Latin style. We know from his writing that he was in the retinue and received the patronage of Absalon, Archbishop of Lund, the foremost adviser to King Valdemar I.
In his will Absalon forgives his clerk Saxo a small debt of two and a half marks of silver and tells him to return two borrowed books to the monastery of Sorø. The legacy of Saxo Grammaticus is the sixteen book. In the preface to the work, Saxo writes that his patron Absalon, Archbishop of Lund had encouraged him to write a heroic history of the Danes; the history is thought to have been started about 1185. The goal of Gesta Danorum was as Saxo writes "to glorify our fatherland," which he accomplishes on the model of the Aeneid by Vergil. Saxo may have owed much to Plato, Cicero and to more contemporary writers like Geoffrey of Monmouth. Saxo's history of the Danes was compiled from sources that are of questionable historical value but were to him the only ones extant, he drew on oral tales of the Icelanders, ancient volumes, letters carved on rocks and stone, the statements of his patron Absalon concerning the history of which the Archbishop had been a part. Saxo's work was not a history or a simple record of old tales, rather it was, in the parlance of Friis-Jensen, "a product of Saxo's own mind and times,".
The history is composed of sixteen books and extends from the time of the founders of the Danish people, Dan I of Denmark and Angul into about the year 1187. The first four are concerned with the history of the Danes before Christ, the next four with the history after Christ, books 9-12 Christian Denmark and 13-16 promote Lund and the exploits early before and during Saxo's own lifetime, it is assumed that the last eight books were written first, as Saxo drew on the work of Absalon for evidence of the age of Saint Canute and Valdemar I. The first eight volumes share a likeness with the works of Saxo's contemporary Snorri Sturluson, they deal with mythical elements such as the Scandinavian pantheon of gods. Saxo tells of Dan the first king of Denmark who had a brother named Angul who gave his name to the Angles, he tells the stories of various other Danish heroes, many who interact with the Scandinavian gods. Saxo's "heathen" gods however were not always good characters, they were sometimes treacherous such as in the story of Harald, legendary king of the Danes, taught the ways of warfare by Odinn and was betrayed and killed by the god who brought him to Valhalla.
Saxo's world is seen to have had warlike values. He glorifies the heroes, his view of the period of peace under King Frode was low and was only satisfied when King Knut brought back the ancestral customs. Saxo's chronology of kings extends up to Saint Canute and his son Valdemar I. Saxo finished the history with the Preface, which he wrote last, about 1216 under the patronage of Anders Sunesen who replaced Absalon as Archbishop of Lund. Saxo included in the preface warm appreciation of both Archbishops and of the reigning King Valdemar II. Of particular interest for Shakespeare scholars is the story of Amleth, the first instance of the playwright's Hamlet. Saxo based the story on an oral tale of a son taking revenge for his murdered father. Christiern P
