VALDEMAR IV., king of Denmark (c. 1320-1375), was the youngest son of Christopher II. of Denmark. Valdemar was brought up at the court of the German emperor, Louis of Bavaria, during those miserable years when Denmark was partitioned among Holstein counts and German Ritter, while Scania, "the bread-basket" of the monarchy, sought deliverance from anarchy under the protection of Magnus of Sweden. Even the Hansa Towns, the hereditary enemies of Denmark, regarded the situ ation with disquietude. "One would gladly have seen a single king in Denmark if only for peace sake," says the contemporary Lubeck chronicle, "for peace was not to be had either at sea or on land." The assassination at Randers of the detested Holstein tyrant Count Gerhard III. (1340), who for nine years had held Jutland and Funen and dominated the rest of Denmark, first opened Valdemar's way to the throne, and on midsummer day 1340 he was elected king at a Landsting held at Viborg, after consenting to espouse Helveg, the sister of his most important confederate, Valdemar, duke of Schleswig.
Valdemar could not have been more than 20 when he became the nominal king of Denmark, though, as a matter of fact, his territory was limited to the northernmost county of Jutland. His precocious maturity is strikingly evident from the first. An energy which never slackened, a doggedness which no adversity could crush, a fiery ambition coupled with the coolest calculation, and a diplomatic unscrupulousness which looked always to the end and never to the means, these were the salient qualities of the reconstructor of the dismembered Danish state. First Val demar aimed at the recovery of Zealand, which was actually par titioned among a score of Holstein mortgagees who ruled their portions despotically from their strong castles, and sucked the people dry. The oppressed clergy and peasantry regarded Val demar as their natural deliverer; but the work of redemption proved painfully slow.
of Zealand was redeemed, and the southern isles, Laaland, Falster and Mon, also fell into the king's strenuous hands. By this time, too, the whole of Jutland (except the province of Ribe) had fallen to him, county by county, as their respective holders were paid off. In 1349, at the Landsting of Ringsted, Valdemar proudly rendered an account of his stewardship to the Estates of Zealand, and the bishop of Roskilde congratulated him on having so miraculously delivered his people from foreign thral dom. In August 1346, he prudently rid himself of the distant and useless province of Estonia by selling it very advantageously.
In north German politics Valdemar interfered to protect his brother-in-law the Margrave Louis of Brandenburg against the lords of Mecklenburg and the dukes of Pomerania, with such success that the emperor, Charles IV., at the conference of Bautzen, was reconciled to the Brandenburger and allowed Val demar an annual charge of 16,000 silver marks on the city of Liibeck Some years later Valdemar even contemplated a descent on England iii alliance with the French king John, but the chronic state of rebellion in western Denmark, which, fomented by the discontented Jutish magnates, lasted with short intervals from 135o to 136o, and compelled Valdemar to renounce this fantastic design. But he proved more than a match for his domestic rebels, especially after his great victory at Brobjaerg in Funen (1357). Finally, the compact of Kalundborg restored peace to the kingdom.
Valdemar now turned his eyes to the "kingdom of Scania." Valdemar had indeed pledged it solemnly and irrevocably to King Magnus of Sweden, who had held it for 20 years; but profiting by the difficulties of Magnus with his Norwegian subjects, after skilfully securing his own position by negotiations with Albert of Mecklenburg and the Hanseatic League, Valdemar suddenly and irresistibly invaded Scania, and by the end of 1361 all the old Danish lands, except North Holland, were recovered.