For administrative purposes Denmark is di vided into 18 counties (amter), each of which is adridnistered by a governor (amtmand). Moreover, the county is a municipal division with a county council superintending the rural municipalities (about 1,200). There are 77 ur ban municipalities with a mayor and a town council. Rural as well as urban municipal coun cils are elected direct by universal suffrage. Copenhagen forms a district by itself, and has its own form of administration. The total rev enue in the fiscal year from 1916 to 1917 was $134,388,105; and the expenditure $82,633,085. Since the war of 1866, the government has maintained a comparatively large reserve fund to meet any sudden emergency. That fund in 1917 was $3,182,605. The total national debt is $163,634,870, or about $58 per head of the popu lation; the investments of the state (in tele graphs, etc.) amount to over $301,111,110. The deposits in the Danish savings banks increased from $262,827,000 in 1916 to $298,440,000 in 1917.
The Danish army is a national militia, re sembling in some respects the Swiss army. Every able-bodied Danish subject is liable to serve in the army or navy, except the in habitants of Iceland, and the Faroe Islands. Exemptions in Denmark are few, even clergy men having to serve. Service commences at the age of 20 and lasts for 16 years. For the first 8 the men belong to the active army, and for the second 8 years to the extra, or territorial, reserve. At the time of joining, the recruits are continuously trained for 165 days in the in fantry, 280 days in the field artillery, 1 year in the garrison artillery and 200 days in the cavalry. The engineers have 7 months', and the train 2 months' continuous training. In the case of about one-fourth of the men their initial training is prolonged by periods ranging from 2%. to 8% months, according to the arm of the service to which they belong. Subsequent training for all arms only takes place once or twice in the remaining 6 or 7 years of army service, and then only for 25 or 30 days on each occasion. The peace strength of the active army is about 820 officers and 12,900 men. The navy in 1916 had 3 monitors, 15 torpedo boats, 2 small cruisers, 2 minelayers and 6 submarines. Besides these, there is a nominal fleet of war craft, but this has little or no fighting power. The navy numbers 4,000 officers and men. The military budget for 1916 amounts to $4,902,465, besides allotments for fortifications, etc.
History.— The early history of Denmark is lost in the twilight of the saga-period, out of which loom dimly the figures of its heroes, their brave deeds and daring voyages. Within its borders the Celts had first their home, and from its shores the Angles and Saxons sailed in the 5th century to the conquest of England; while in their place the Danes from Zealand settled on the deserted lands, extending their sway as far south as the Eider. One of their earliest kings, Harald Hildetand, fell in battle against the Swedes in 695; and shortly afterward a branch of the Ynglinger occupied Jutland, where they held a footing for two centuries. One of their kings, Harald Kiak, received baptism in 826 from Ansgar, but the introduction of Christianity did not at once place any check on the long accus tomed inroads on Frankish territory, or on the piratical expeditions of the Vikings; although the country was soon torn by dissensions be tween the adherents of the old and new faiths.
Gorm the Old, who drove the Ynglinger from the peninsula, and first united the mainland and islands under one rule, was the bitter enemy of Christianity; and although his death in 936 gave fresh vigor to the diffusion of the new faith, yet even its ultimate success was only ensured by the zealous support it received from Gorm's grandson, Canitte. On his death in 1035 the three kingdoms of his Anglo-Scandinavian Em pire separated, and his sister's son, Svend Estridsen (1047-76), ascended the throne of Denmark, founding a princely line that flourished 400 years. Internal dissensions and external wars weakened the country, and the introduction of a feudal system raised up a powerful nobility, and ground down the once free people to a con dition of serfdom. Waldemar I (1157-82) added Riigen to the other Wendish districts of Meck lenburg and Pomeraia, and extended his sway over Norway also. Under Waldemar II the conquests of Denmark extended so far into Ger man and Wendish lands, that the Baltic was little more than an inland Danish sea. Thejeal ousy of the German princes and the treachery of his vassals combined to rob him, however, of these brilliant conquests, and his death in 1241 was followed by a century of anarchy and in glorious decadence of the authority of the Crown, during which the kingdom was brought to the brink of annihilation. Under his great grandson, Waldemar IV, Denmark made a tran sient recovery of the conquests of the older Waldemars, rousing the jealousy of the Hanse atic League, and the national laws were codified. From his death in 1375 to 1412, his daughter, the great Margaret, widow of Haakon VI of Nor way, ruled not only that country and Denmark, but in course of time Sweden also, with so light yet firm a hand that for once in the course of their history the three rival Scandinavian king doms were content to act in harmony. Mar garet's successor, Eric, the son of her niece, for whose sake she had striven to give permanence, by the act known as the Union of Calmar (1397), to the amalgamation of the three sovereignities into one, undid her glorious work with fatal rapidity, lost the allegiance and the crowns of his triple kingdom, and ended his disastrous existence in misery and obscurity. After the short reign of his nephew, Chris topher of Bavaria (144048), the Danes ex erted their ancient right of election to the throne, and chose for their king Christian of Oldenburg, a descendant of the old royal fam ily through his maternal ancestress, Rikissa, the great-granddaughter of Waldemar II. Chris tian I (1448-81), who was at the same time elected Duke of Schleswig and Holstein, was the founder of the Oldenburg line, which con tinued unbroken till the death of Frederick VII in 1863. His reign was followed by half a cen tury of international struggles in Scandinavia. The insane tyranny of Christian II cost that monarch his throne and freedom; the Danes chose his uncle Frederick I to be their king, while Sweden was forever separated from Den mark and rose under the Vasas to be a power ful state. See Gusvavus• I.