denmark-norway as a potential world power in the early seventeenth century

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Itinerario http://journals.cambridge.org/ITI Additional services for Itinerario: Email alerts: Click here Subscriptions: Click here Commercial reprints: Click here Terms of use : Click here Denmark-Norway as a Potential World Power in the Early Seventeenth Century Már Jónsson 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: Már Jónsson (2009). Denmark-Norway as a Potential World Power in the Early Seventeenth Century. Itinerario, 33, pp 17-27 doi:10.1017/S0165115300003077 Request Permissions : Click here

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  • Itinerariohttp://journals.cambridge.org/ITI

    Additional services for Itinerario:

    Email alerts: Click hereSubscriptions: Click hereCommercial reprints: Click hereTerms of use : Click here

    Denmark-Norway as a Potential World Power in theEarly Seventeenth Century

    Mr Jnsson

    Itinerario / Volume 33 / Issue 02 / July 2009, pp 17 - 27DOI: 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 EarlySeventeenth Century. Itinerario, 33, pp 17-27 doi:10.1017/S0165115300003077

    Request Permissions : Click here

  • Denmark-Norway as a Potential World Powerin the Early Seventeenth Century

    MR JNSSON*

    On 2 January 1625, the English ambassador Robert Anstruther met with KingChristian IV of Norway and Denmark and requested his participation in a union ofProtestant states against Emperor Ferdinand II and the Catholic League inGermany. Within three days, King Christian proposed to contribute five thousandsoldiers for one year, as part of an army of almost thirty thousand men.1 In earlyJune, despite opposition from the Danish Council of State, reluctant to put a hugeamount of money into foreign affairs, Christian decided to join what he called thewar for the defence of Lower Saxony. He then headed an army of mercenariessouthwards through Lower Saxony, secured all crossings over the river Weser andprepared to confront the Catholic forces.2 On 29 November, it was decided thatDenmark would be in charge of military operations in Northern Germany, whereasEngland and the United Provinces would provide a monthly subsidy.3 The politicaland military prospects for Denmark were excellent, to say the least. It had the fourthstrongest navy in Europe (after Spain and the two new allies), and only a few yearsbefore the Danish warships had been described by a French observer as merveillesde locan. A small standing army of two regiments had recently been establishedand Denmark was the fourth European state to do so after France, Spain and theneighbouring Sweden.4

    In this article I will argue that the promising political position gained by theDanish monarchy in the 1620s was to a great extent based on its struggle to securethe hegemony over the North Atlantic, as English, Dutch, French, and Spanishwhaling ships started hunting off the recently discovered Spitsbergen and near thecoasts of Northern Norway and Iceland. This was achieved by sending warships tothe North, by mounting whaling expeditions, and not least by negotiating on anequal footing with Dutch and English authorities. I do not claim that those eventswere more important in concrete terms than the intermittent wars with Sweden, thecontrol of the Sound and the Baltic trade, or Christian IVs incessant efforts to asserthis will in Northern Germany; but they did have more influence than scholars usu-ally acknowledge.5 Even more importantly, the experience gained in the farawayNorth nurtured an increasingly global outlook that led to Danish colonial venturesin Asia, Africa and America in the centuries to comesmall in scale, perhaps, butrich with possibilities.

    Itinerario volume XXXIII (2009) number 2

    17

  • Dutch explorers found Spitsbergen in June 1596 but were not specificallylooking for it and thus continued to the east, famously spending the winter inNovaja Semlja.6 In 1607, Henry Hudson and others on behalf of the MuscovyCompany came close to Spitsbergen seeing many whales and in the followingyears the company sent several whaling expeditions.7 The news spread and both aDutch and Spanish Basque ship made its way to the area.8 Consequently, on30 March 1613, the extremely competitive Muscovy Company obtained a charterfrom King James I that excluded other nations from hunting for whales atSpitsbergen. It then sent seven ships, one of them armed, while merchants inAmsterdam sent two more ships; in addition, another five French ships as well aseight or more Spanish Basque ships joined in the competition. Basque whalers hadbeen active off Newfoundland since the 1540s but the whale stocks were almostdepleted and only a few ships had gone there for some years. At Spitsbergen, theEnglish chased all other ships away (except the ship from Saint Jean de Luz thathad an English licence) and confiscated what had been caught.9 On their return tripthe French and Spanish ships went to the north-western part of Iceland and caughta few whales. The Dutch captains, as they returned, claimed compensation fromEnglish authorities for what had been confiscated. Faced with English claims tomonopoly, French and Spanish Basque ships went to Iceland in 1614 instead ofgoing to Spitsbergen again.10 The Dutch, however, reacted by putting together acompany, the Noordsche Compagnie, and claimed monopoly at Spitsbergen justas the English had done. The new company sent a fleet of fourteen ships toSpitsbergen, accompanied by warships. They were far superior to the English, whoconsequently agreed on a division of the hunting grounds. No other ships were tobe 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 managedto keep English and German merchants and fishers away from Iceland and theFaroe Islands. In the last decades of the sixteenth century, English and Dutchadventurers added to the pressure as they strove to find the northeast passage toChina but settled for lucrative trade with Russians instead. King Frederik II ofDenmark reacted by requiring that all ships should get a licence to sail to the NorthAtlantic 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 andthree years later an expedition was sent to recover Danish-Norwegian rights inGreenland.12

    At first, Spitsbergen was thought to be part of Greenland and is often called bythat name in the sourcesGroland, Grynland, Groenland. When it became knownthat Spitsbergen consisted of separate islands, both the English and the Dutchclaimed to have found them. The Danish monarchy, however, had undisputed sov-ereignty over Greenland since medieval times and thus also, in its own view, overSpitsbergen. The outcome was a fierce dispute between Denmark, England and theUnited Provinces. In January 1615, King James of England and Scotland, whosewife Anne was King Christian IVs sister, sent Robert Anstruther to Copenhagen toinsist on an English whaling monopoly off the coast of Northern Norway, andoffered payment instead. King James did not acknowledge Danish rights over

    MR JNSSON18

  • Spitsbergen and claimed that as the Danes had no interest in whaling ventures theycould just as well help the English in excluding the French, the Dutch, and theSpanish. King Christian and the State Council, in agreement for once, rejected theproposal 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 toNorthern 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 paidtheir dues to local authorities. Danish interests were also pursued by direct partici-pation in whaling ventures. In 1614 two merchants of Bergen and one fromCopenhagen got a whaling licence for Northern Norway and were allowed to hiretwo or three foreign specialists, which meant Basques. The three men joined forceswith merchants in Amsterdam, some of whom took part in the NordscheeCompagnie, 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 of30 April and 1 May 1615. The first one concerned Basque whalers who had chasedsome inhabitants of Iceland from their homes the summer before. If they returnedthey were to be caught, the ships taken and the men, if necessary, killed.16 With thesecond 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 royallicence.17 Two Spanish ships were taken in Kjelvik and two French ships inTmmervik. They had indeed paid their dues to local authorities but that was notsufficient anymore and a royal licence was needed. One of the French ships was setfree but the others were brought to Copenhagen, where the second French shipwas released. The catch of the Spanish Basques was confiscated as compensationfor damage done in Iceland the year before, the ships withheld and the crewsordered to stay. The captains must have written to San Sebastin, and two of theowners hurried to London and asked the Spanish ambassador for help. He gotQueen Anne to write a letter to her brother in Denmark, asking him to release theships, and wrote another one himself. The ship-owners arrived in Copenhagen inFebruary 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 aship for whaling off Northern Norway. They were also provided with a corsair licenceto take foreign ships that did not have a royal permit for hunting whales. Three shipsfrom La Rochelle were taken close to Troms. It is also known that three Englishwhalers were off Ingy.19 Last but not least, on 21 May, three warships led by GabrielKruse were sent to Spitsbergen in order to inspect the whaling grounds. They wereto 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 Dutchcaptains of course rejected these claims, but at least they knew that the Danishmonarchy had to be reckoned with, which probably was the main purpose of thetrip.20

    It may have been as a first reaction to the arrival of the two ship-owners from SanSebastin 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 UnitedProvinces, 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 lettheir subjects know about this, and as a final point King Christian recalled thelicence 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. Acondition for further licences was the acceptance of Danish sovereignty.21 TheEnglish and Dutch, as could be expected, did not agree to the latter part of KingChristians 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, thatSpitsbergen 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 winterin Copenhagen and may actually have been hired by Danish whalers in the summerof 1616. The two ships left the Sound in early October.22 As compensation for theirlosses 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 in1619, with two ships of his own.23 The owner of the French Basque ship taken in1615 returned the year after, collaborating with merchants of Copenhagen.24 NoSpanish ships came to the North after 1619, but Danish collaboration with FrenchBasques continued at least until 1632.25

    By spring 1616, with a mixture of prohibitions, violence and licences, the Danishmonarchy had managed to secure a monopoly of whaling in Northern Norway andIceland. The more lucrative Spitsbergen hunting grounds remained disputed forthree more years. In June 1616 the State Council encouraged King Christian toadopt 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, whichwas to be avoided.26 On 25 October, three Copenhagen entrepreneurs got a licencefor five ships to go whaling in Spitsbergen and on 20 November a Copenhagenmerchant in collaboration with others from Dieppe in France got a licence for oneship. On 21 April 1617, merchants in Bergen got a licence for an undeterminednumber of ships that would go to Spitsbergen.27 At least one of these expeditionsran into trouble with English ships, whose captains claimed English monopoly inthe 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 Novemberrejected all claims of compensation and insisted that Spitsbergen had been discov-ered by the English. He decreed, however, that Danish whaling would be toleratedfor the time being, but that King Christians claim to sovereignty would not beaccepted.28 In February 1618, Jonas Charisius went to London on behalf of KingChristian, who yet again insisted that Greenland and other northern regions hadalways belonged to the crown of Norway and that English ships needed to pay alicence for whaling. King James rejected that claim and suggested instead thatEnglish and Danish whalers should collaborate in keeping other nations away.29

    In 1616 and 1617, Dutch whalers were busy establishing themselves in JanMayen to the south. In the summer of 1618 they returned to Spitsbergen with forceand there was serious trouble, resulting in a tacit agreement of dividing the islandsbetween England and the United Provinces. Danish ships were at Spitsbergen toobut caught few whales.30 In 1619, there was further conflict between English andDutch whalers at Spitsbergen, commented on a year later by King Christian with aclear sympathy for his brother-in-law.31 By the end of 1619, Christian had decided

    MR JNSSON20

  • to participate in the Spitsbergen whaling with two ships of his own in collaborationwith Johan Braem, a merchant from Hamburg. Four Danish ships left Copenhagenon 17 May 1619 with more than twenty Basques on board, but caught only ninewhales. 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 anIcelandic gunner who was present and later wrote his memoirs. He also mentionsa great banquet held by Dutch whalers with Danes and Englishmen present.32

    Danish activities at Spitsbergen were thus accepted and on 15 April 1620, KingChristian suggested to his State Council that a general treaty should be made withEngland and the United Provinces. In March 1621 two Danish representatives wentto London and a treaty was signed on 29 April. No agreement was reached onSpitsbergen until 9 October, however, when King James conceded that subjects ofboth kings could hunt for whales as long as the two of them lived, on condition thatDanish ships would not sell their catch in his kingdoms. A few weeks later KingChristian declared himself satisfied with this solution.33 Even more complicated dis-cussions led to a general treaty between Denmark and the United Provinces on30 September, and although there is no specific mention of whaling there seems tobe an understanding that both parties would do what they deemed best.34 It goeswithout saying that an English-Dutch acceptance of Danish sovereignty in the areawas out of the question. That did not change for decades, but there is no reason todoubt that the Danish monarchy now stood equal to the most powerful states in thedisputed North.

    King Christians new position of strength allowed him to realistically think that hecould profit from the colonial trade just as the Dutch and the English had done fora few decades. The Dutch had dominated Baltic trade for a long time and by 1600they had replaced the English as leaders in trade with Archangel. Their trade in WestAfrica 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 byproceeding to the north of Norway, thus finding Spitsbergen, but when the passagewas not found they sent expeditions to the south of Africa. By 1602, when theDutch East Indies Company was founded, no less than sixty-five ships had sailedfrom the United Provinces to the East Indies, and during the next two decades anaverage of five or six ships went there every year. In 1617, the Dutch had aroundtwenty fortresses and forty warships in the area, competing with Spanish,Portuguese, and English merchants.35 The English East India Company had beenfounded in 1600 and the first trading posts established a few years later, but Englishmerchants and colonizers were also rapidly establishing themselves in theCaribbean 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 DanishEast India Company was founded on 17 March 1616 on the initiative of two Dutchmerchants in Copenhagen. King Christian contributed greatly to its funds. InNovember 1617 a Dutch envoy of the emperor of Ceylon arrived in Copenhagenand asked for help against the Portuguese. Detailed agreements were signed on30 March and 2 August 1618. In late November five ships left Copenhagen for theIndian 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 werereceived with less joy than had been predicted by the representative, who haddeceased during the journey. The emperor had no money to pay for his part of theagreement, but instead, on 21 August 1620, conceded the area of Trinquenamaleto the Danish king, where the Danes started building a fortress. Admiral Ove Gjeddealso had dealings with the Nayka of Tanjore on the Coast of Coromandel, and on19 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 onthe fortress and a ship had been lost. He left for Copenhagen on 1 June 1621 witha cargo of pepper, leaving twenty men as hostages. It cannot be said that the triphad been a triumph, and the biased comment of a Dutch agent in nearbyMasulipatam seems fitting: This was the history and the end of the miserableDanish voyage, full of discord, quarrels, fights and murder.38 Nonetheless, theDanes managed to build a fortress in Tranquebar surrounded by handsome wallsand well furnished with bastions at each corner, according to the Icelandic gunnermentioned before, who was there in 1622-3.39

    Danish expansionist efforts went further. In May 1619, the Norwegian explorerand navigator Jens Munk had been sent to search for the northwest passage andwas 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 and1620, with great losses.40 In the fall of 1621, King Christian accepted a proposal ofgetting ivory at the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. There were projects onGuinea in Africa in 1624-5 and the West Indies in 1622-5.41 Although nothing cameout of any of these projects they could have been the beginning of a promisingcolonial empire. King Christians war in Germany stifled these prospects and it soonbecame apparent that he stood against superior forces. His army lost the battle ofLutten in Lower Saxony on 27 August 1626 and a year later things really turned forthe worse with the invasion and occupation of Jutland. In spring 1628 Danishforces resisted further attacks and even counter-attacked. Ensuing negotiationsallowed King Christian to make peace without being humiliated. A treaty was signedin 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 themost powerful states in Europe. Denmark was left behind, without allies and nottrusted by anyone. In 1630, Sweden took over the leadership of Protestant powersin the war and took advantage of its position and strength in December 1643 byinvading Holstein and southern Jutland, and a few weeks later Scania. The peaceagreements signed in Brmsebro in the summer of 1645 marked the end ofDenmark 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 lostScania to Sweden.43

    This is well known, but these disasters have been allowed to overshadow thefew years when the Danish monarchy could have become an important participantin the European expansion. The successful consolidation of its political hegemonyin the North Atlantic from 1614 onwards gave King Christian IV enough confidenceto think of himself as an international figure. Whaling activities were never more

    MR JNSSON22

  • 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 capableof 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 atTranquebar. In the years 1622-39, nineteen ships went there from Copenhagen andfive returned, the last one in 1643.44 However, by the late 1650s Denmark felt strongenough to renew its attention towards the larger world and in a way to resume KingChristians colonial ambitions. The fort of Frederiksberg on the Gold Coast of WestAfrica 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 in1649 but lost it to the Dutch in 1663, just as it eight years earlier had lost its smallsettlement in Delaware, founded in 1638.46 The Swedes subsequently gave up allideas of world expansion, but the Danes did not. The island of St. Thomas in theCaribbean was settled in the 1670s and five years later a West Indies Company wasfounded, expanded to include Guinea in 1674.47 A new East India Company wasfounded in 1670, reinforcing Danish presence at Tranquebar, and hoping toexpand, for instance in 1675 and 1677 by asking, without success, the Spanishgovernment to grant a licence to trade in the Philippines.48 Modest expansion in theCaribbean resulted in the taking over of St. John in 1718 and the buying of St. Croixfrom 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 thenearby island of Puerto Rico, almost abandoned by the Spanish, as it would supplyinfinite commercial advantages to Denmark.49 There was indeed reason to be opti-mistic, and the Kingdom of Denmark-Norway (finally) had established itself as acolonial player, although on a diminutive scale, almost invisible compared to thedaring feats of the Dutch and the English.

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    Rstad, Arnold. Kongens strmme. Historiske og folkerettslige underskelser angaaende sjterritori-et. Oslo: Cammermeyer, 1912.

    Tandrup, Leo. Mod triumf eller tragedie. En politisk-diplomatisk studie over forlbet af den dansk-svenske magtkamp fra Kalmarkrigen til Kejserkrigen. Two vols. Aarhus: Universitetsforlaget, 1979.

    The Dutch Factories in India, 1617-1623. A Collection of Dutch East India Company DocumentsPertaining to India, edited by Om Prakash. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 1984.

    The Life of the Icelander Jn lafsson Traveller to India, edited by Bertha S. Phillpotts and RichardTemple and translated by Bertha S. Phillpotts. Two vols. London: The Hakluyt Society, 1923-1932.

    Thorlksson, Helgi. Sjrn og siglingar. Ensk-slensk samskipti 1580-1630. Reykjavk: Ml og menning,1999.

    Turgeon, Laurier. Pches basques du Labourd en Atlantique nord (XVI-XVII sicle): ports, routes ettrafics. Itsas memoria 3 (2000): 164-78.

    DENMARK-NORWAY AS A POTENTIAL WORLD POWER 25

  • MR JNSSON26

    Notes

    * Mr Jnsson (b. 1959) is Professor of Historyat the University of Iceland. His publicationsin English include: The Expulsion of the LastMuslims from Spain in 1609-1614: TheDestruction of an Islamic Periphery". Journalof Global History 2:2 (2007): 195-212;Arnas Magnus Islandus: A Visiting Scholarin Leipzig, 1694-96. Lias 26 (1999): 213-32;and Defining Incest by the Word of God:Northern Europe 1520-1740. History ofEuropean 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 YearsWar, 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 ThirtyYears War, 77, 81; Lockhart, Denmark,1513-1660, 3, 47, 104, 109, 149.

    6 Hacquebord, In Search of Het BehoudenHuys, 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 andTrans-Atlantic Fishing in Spanish BasquePorts, 253-58; Conway, No Mans Land, 62;Resolutin der Staten-Generaal...1613-1616, 35; De Jong, Geschiedenis van deoude Nederlandse Walvisvaart, 25. On whal-ing off Newfoundland, see Huxley, Los vas-cos y las pesqueras transatlnticas, 26-164;Barkham, French Basque New FoundLand Entrepreneurs, 17-24; Turgeon,Pches basques du Labourd en Atlantiquenord, 165-70.

    10 Jnsson, Adragandi og staSpnverjavga, 72, 77-80; Resolutin derStaten-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 Voicesfrom 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 egenhndigebreve 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 notbecause there was conflict during the whalingseason. Three ships from San Sebastin were crushed by ice as they were about to leave Reykjarfjrur in the northwest of Iceland onthe night of 21 September 1615. The 80 meninspired fear and 31 of them were killed bylocals; see Einarsson, Hvalveiar vi sland,27-31; Edvardsson and Rafnsson, BasqueWhaling Around Iceland, 5-7.

    17 Kancelliets brevbger 1609-1615, 793;Probst, Christian 4.s flde, 135-7.

    18 State Archives, Copenhagen. Kongehusetsog rigets arkiv D 11-12. Island. SupplementII, 14: Biscayer Sache, belangend denWalfischfang, 1615. The folder contains let-ters from the owners and detailed lists of whatwas confiscated. I have written on this insome detail in Icelandic; see Jnsson,Adragandi og sta Spnverjavga, 66-76. On Sarmiento de Acua, later Conde deGondomar, see Garca Hernn, Polticos dela 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 KancelliUdenrigske Afdeling. Alm. Del 1, 10. KopibogLatina 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 KancelliUdenrigske Afdeling. Alm. Del 1, 10. KopibogLatina 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 egenhndigebreve 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 lacarrera de Indias, 647-56; The DutchFactories in India, 1-18; Dijk, Seventeenth-century Burma and the Dutch East IndiaCompany, 55-71; cf. Cook, Matters ofExchange,180-7.

    36 Lenman, Englands Colonial Wars, 169-76,184-88, 220-30; Chakrabarty, Anglo-MughalCommercial Relations, 3-7, 25-37, 49-54.

    37 Lockhart, Denmark, 1513-1660, 133-4, 137-8.

    38 Feldbk, The Danish Trading Companies ofthe Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,206; Olsen, Dansk Ostindien, 35; Danskudenrigspolitisk 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 ThirtyYears War, 67-71; Probst, Christian 4.sflde, 173-80; Danmark-Noregs Traktater,vol. 4, 42-86.

    43 Lockhart, Denmark, 1513-1660, 204-9, 235-8; Lockhart, Denmark in the Thirty YearsWar, 248, 265; Parker, The Thirty Years War,110-4.

    44 Olsen, Dansk Ostindien, 85-174; Gregersen,Trankebar, 1987, 40-46; Probst, Christian4.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 andGuinea, 21-23; Gbel, The Danish TradingCompanies: Their Organization, Trade andShipping 1671-1807, 2-4; Feldbk, TheDanish 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; AlegrePeyrn, 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.