Portal:Denmark/Selected biography/Archive/2008
Denmark Portal selected biography archive: 2008 edit
This is the selected biography archive, for the Denmark portal.
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Christian IV of Denmark and Norway (12 April 1577 – 28 February 1648) was the longest reigning Danish monarch with a reign of almost 60 years. His reign was characterized by wars and rivalry with Sweden as well as his unsuccessful involvement in the Thirty Years' War. He is also remembered for founding a number of towns and a large number of buildings, including Børsen, Rundetårn and Holy Trinity Church in Kristianstad. He features in the Danish national play, Elverhøj (The Elf's Hill) and is the central figure in the Danish royal anthem Kong Christian stod ved højen mast.
Christian was the son of Frederick II and Sophia of Mecklenburg. He was born at Frederiksborg Palace in 1577, and succeeded to the throne on the death of his father (4 April 1588), attaining his majority on 17 August 1596. ...
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Jacob August Riis (May 3, 1849 - May 26, 1914), a Danish-American muckraker journalist, photographer, and social reformer, was born in Ribe, Denmark. He is known for his dedication to using his photographic and journalistic talents to help the less fortunate in New York City, which was the subject of most of his prolific writings and photographic essays. As one of the first photographers to use flash, he is considered a pioneer in photography.
Riis held various jobs before he landed a position as a police reporter in 1873 with the New York Evening Sun newspaper. In 1874, he joined the news bureau of the Brooklyn News. In 1877 he served as police reporter, this time for the New York Tribune. During these stints as a police reporter, Riis worked the most crime-ridden and impoverished slums of the city. Through his own experiences in the poor houses, and witnessing the conditions of the poor in the city slums, he decided to make a difference for those who had no voice.
He was one of the first Americans to use flash powder, allowing his documentation of New York City slums to penetrate the dark of night, and helping him capture the hardships faced by the poor and criminal along his police beats, especially on the notorious Mulberry Street. In 1889, Scribner's Magazine published Riis's photographic essay on city life, which Riis later expanded to create his magnum opus How the Other Half Lives.
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Hans Christian Ørsted (August 14, 1777 – March 9, 1851) was a Danish physicist and chemist, influenced by the thinking of Immanuel Kant. He is best known for discovering the relationship between electricity and magnetism known as electromagnetism.
From 1806, Ørsted was a professor at the University of Copenhagen. He was instrumental in the founding of the university's Faculty of Science shortly before his death. In the 1960's the main building complex of the university's new science campus was named in his honor.
Ørsted was the driving force behind the founding of the Technical University of Denmark in 1829 and served as its first director. The present-day department of applied electronics is named Ørsted·DTU in his honor.
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Peter Schmeichel MBE, born 18 November 1963 in Gladsaxe, Denmark) is a retired Danish professional footballer who played as a goalkeeper, and was voted the "World's Best Goalkeeper" in 1992 and 1993. He experienced his most successful years playing for English club Manchester United, with whom he won the 1999 UEFA Champions League to complete The Treble. He was a key member of the Denmark national football team which won the 1992 European Championship (Euro 92) tournament.
Schmeichel is famous for his intimidating physique (he wears an XXXL shirt and stands 6'4" tall) and his attacking threat. Throughout his career, Schmeichel scored 11 goals, a great feat for a keeper. He is the most capped player for the Denmark national team, with 129 games and one goal between 1987 and 2001. Apart from Euro 92, he played for his country at the 1998 FIFA World Cup and three additional European Championship tournaments. He captained the national team in 30 matches.
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Søren Aabye Kierkegaard, a 19th century Danish philosopher and theologian, is generally recognized as the first existentialist philosopher. He bridged the gap that existed between Hegelian philosophy and what was to become Existentialism. Kierkegaard strongly criticised both the Hegelian philosophy of his time, and what he saw as the empty formalities of the Danish church. Much of his work deals with religious problems such as the nature of faith, the institution of the Christian Church, Christian ethics and theology, and the emotions and feelings of individuals when faced with existential choices. Because of this, Kierkegaard's work is sometimes characterized as Christian existentialism and existential psychology. Since he wrote most of his early work under various pseudonyms, and often these pseudo-authors would comment on and critique the works of his other pseudo-authors, it can be exceedingly difficult to distinguish between what Kierkegaard truly believed and what he was merely arguing for as part of a pseudo-author's position. Ludwig Wittgenstein remarked that Kierkegaard was "by far, the most profound thinker of the nineteenth century".
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Søren Aabye Kierkegaard, a 19th century Danish philosopher and theologian, is generally recognized as the first existentialist philosopher. He bridged the gap that existed between Hegelian philosophy and what was to become Existentialism. Kierkegaard strongly criticised both the Hegelian philosophy of his time, and what he saw as the empty formalities of the Danish church. Much of his work deals with religious problems such as the nature of faith, the institution of the Christian Church, Christian ethics and theology, and the emotions and feelings of individuals when faced with existential choices. Because of this, Kierkegaard's work is sometimes characterized as Christian existentialism and existential psychology. Since he wrote most of his early work under various pseudonyms, and often these pseudo-authors would comment on and critique the works of his other pseudo-authors, it can be exceedingly difficult to distinguish between what Kierkegaard truly believed and what he was merely arguing for as part of a pseudo-author's position. Ludwig Wittgenstein remarked that Kierkegaard was "by far, the most profound thinker of the nineteenth century".
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Baroness Karen von Blixen-Finecke (April 17, 1885 – September 7, 1962), née Karen Dinesen, was a Danish author also known under her pen name Isak Dinesen. Blixen wrote works both in Danish and in English. She is best known, at least in English, for Out of Africa, her account of living in Kenya, and one of her stories, Babette's Feast, both of which have been adapted into highly acclaimed motion pictures.
The daughter of writer and army officer Wilhelm Dinesen, and Ingeborg Westenholz, (and sister of Thomas Dinesen), she was born into a Unitarian bourgeois family in Rungsted, on the island of Zealand, in Denmark, and was schooled in art in Copenhagen, Paris, and Rome.
She began publishing fiction in various Danish periodicals in 1905 under the pseudonym Osceola, the name of the Seminole Indian leader, possibly inspired by her father's connection with American Indians. From August 1872 to December 1873, Wilhelm Dinesen had lived among the Chippewa Indians, in Wisconsin, where he fathered a daughter, who was born after his return to Denmark.
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Victor Borge (January 3, 1909 – December 23, 2000) was a Danish-American humorist, entertainer and pianist, affectionately known as the Clown Prince of Denmark and the Great Dane.
Born Børge Rosenbaum in Copenhagen, Denmark, into a Jewish family. His parents, Bernhard and Frederikke Rosenbaum, were both musicians (his father was a violinist in the Royal Danish Chapel, and his mother played piano), Borge took up piano like his mother at the age of 3, and it was soon apparent that he was a prodigy. He gave his first piano recital when he was 8 years old, and in 1918 was awarded a full scholarship at the Royal Danish Academy of Music, studying under Olivo Krause. Later on, he was taught by Victor Schiøler, Liszt's student Frederic Lamond, and Busoni's pupil Egon Petri.
Borge played his first major concert in 1926 at the Danish concert-hall Odd Fellow Palæet (The Odd Fellow Mansion). After a few years as a classical concert pianist, he started his now famous "stand up" act, with the signature blend of piano music and jokes. He married American Elsie Chilton in 1933, the same year he debuted with his revue acts. Borge started touring extensively in Europe, where he began telling anti-Nazi jokes. This led to Adolf Hitler placing the outspoken Jew on his list of enemies to the Fatherland.
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Carl Theodor Dreyer (February 3, 1889 - March 20, 1968) was a Danish film director. He is regarded as one of the greatest directors in cinema. Although his career spanned the 1910s through the 1960s, his meticulousness, dictatorial methods, idiosyncratic shooting style, and stubborn devotion to his art ensured that his output remained low. In spite of this, he produced some of the most enduring classics of international cinema.
Dreyer was born an illegitimate child in Copenhagen, Denmark. His birth mother was an unmarried Swedish maid named Josefine Bernhardine Nilsson, and he was put up for adoption by his birth father, Jens Christian Torp, a farmer who was his mother's employer. He spent the first two years of his life in orphanages until his adoption. His adoptive parents were typographer named Carl Theodor Dreyer, Sr., and his wife, Inger Marie. His parents were strict Lutherans and his childhood wasn't particularly happy. He was a highly intelligent student in school, and after finishing, he left home at the age of 16. He dissociated himself from his adoptive family, but their teachings were to influence the themes of many of his films.
As a young man, Dreyer worked as a journalist, eventually finding his way into jobs writing title cards for silent films and then writing screenplays. His first forays into directing were met with limited success, and he eventually left Denmark to try his hand in the film industry of France.
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Saxo Grammaticus (c. 1150 – 1220) was a Danish medieval historian of whose life practically nothing is known. The sixteen books of Danish history of this time, known as the Gesta Danorum, are attributed to him, and also contribute our principal evidence of his own existence.
We know he was a "follower" of Archbishop Absalon, which probably means he worked in the archbishop’s administration; his exact status is not determined; he might have been a clerk.
In Absalon’s will, one clericus named Saxo is forgiven a debt of two and a half silver marks and is enjoined to return two manuscripts he has borrowed, to Sorø monastery. From a dozen Saxos or comments on Saxo, found in Danish sources from this timeframe or later, this is the only Saxo comment to be generally accepted to be about the Saxo Grammaticus. However there is no evidence that definitely proves that this comment in Absalon’s will is about our Saxo Grammaticus.
We read in the preface of Gesta Danorum Saxo’s own words that his father and grandfather both served under King Valdemar I as warriors and that he himself would like to serve King Valdemar II, though in a more spiritual way. These few lines just listed are the only concrete information that exists about Saxo Grammaticus.
It is thought he was born on Zealand, as later sources claim. His elegant Latin and Roman knowledge, used in Gesta Danorum, makes it nearly certain that he was educated outside of Denmark, maybe in one of the big church-schools in France.
Saxo Grammaticus was not his real name. He received the appellation Grammaticus, the Latin word for a teacher of letters, in the Compendium Saxonis of Chronica Jutensis, around 1342, to express delight in his use of words. With the printed press publication of Christiern Pedersen's version of the Gesta Danorum, the term Grammaticus has stuck to Saxo as being part of his name.
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Saxo Grammaticus (c. 1150 – 1220) was a Danish medieval historian of whose life practically nothing is known. The sixteen books of Danish history of this time, known as the Gesta Danorum, are attributed to him, and also contribute our principal evidence of his own existence.
We know he was a "follower" of Archbishop Absalon, which probably means he worked in the archbishop’s administration; his exact status is not determined; he might have been a clerk.
In Absalon’s will, one clericus named Saxo is forgiven a debt of two and a half silver marks and is enjoined to return two manuscripts he has borrowed, to Sorø monastery. From a dozen Saxos or comments on Saxo, found in Danish sources from this timeframe or later, this is the only Saxo comment to be generally accepted to be about the Saxo Grammaticus. However there is no evidence that definitely proves that this comment in Absalon’s will is about our Saxo Grammaticus.
We read in the preface of Gesta Danorum Saxo’s own words that his father and grandfather both served under King Valdemar I as warriors and that he himself would like to serve King Valdemar II, though in a more spiritual way. These few lines just listed are the only concrete information that exists about Saxo Grammaticus.
It is thought he was born on Zealand, as later sources claim. His elegant Latin and Roman knowledge, used in Gesta Danorum, makes it nearly certain that he was educated outside of Denmark, maybe in one of the big church-schools in France.
Saxo Grammaticus was not his real name. He received the appellation Grammaticus, the Latin word for a teacher of letters, in the Compendium Saxonis of Chronica Jutensis, around 1342, to express delight in his use of words. With the printed press publication of Christiern Pedersen's version of the Gesta Danorum, the term Grammaticus has stuck to Saxo as being part of his name.
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Saxo Grammaticus (c. 1150 – 1220) was a Danish medieval historian of whose life practically nothing is known. The sixteen books of Danish history of this time, known as the Gesta Danorum, are attributed to him, and also contribute our principal evidence of his own existence.
We know he was a "follower" of Archbishop Absalon, which probably means he worked in the archbishop’s administration; his exact status is not determined; he might have been a clerk.
In Absalon’s will, one clericus named Saxo is forgiven a debt of two and a half silver marks and is enjoined to return two manuscripts he has borrowed, to Sorø monastery. From a dozen Saxos or comments on Saxo, found in Danish sources from this timeframe or later, this is the only Saxo comment to be generally accepted to be about the Saxo Grammaticus. However there is no evidence that definitely proves that this comment in Absalon’s will is about our Saxo Grammaticus.
We read in the preface of Gesta Danorum Saxo’s own words that his father and grandfather both served under King Valdemar I as warriors and that he himself would like to serve King Valdemar II, though in a more spiritual way. These few lines just listed are the only concrete information that exists about Saxo Grammaticus.
It is thought he was born on Zealand, as later sources claim. His elegant Latin and Roman knowledge, used in Gesta Danorum, makes it nearly certain that he was educated outside of Denmark, maybe in one of the big church-schools in France.
Saxo Grammaticus was not his real name. He received the appellation Grammaticus, the Latin word for a teacher of letters, in the Compendium Saxonis of Chronica Jutensis, around 1342, to express delight in his use of words. With the printed press publication of Christiern Pedersen's version of the Gesta Danorum, the term Grammaticus has stuck to Saxo as being part of his name.
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Saxo Grammaticus (c. 1150 – 1220) was a Danish medieval historian of whose life practically nothing is known. The sixteen books of Danish history of this time, known as the Gesta Danorum, are attributed to him, and also contribute our principal evidence of his own existence.
We know he was a "follower" of Archbishop Absalon, which probably means he worked in the archbishop’s administration; his exact status is not determined; he might have been a clerk.
In Absalon’s will, one clericus named Saxo is forgiven a debt of two and a half silver marks and is enjoined to return two manuscripts he has borrowed, to Sorø monastery. From a dozen Saxos or comments on Saxo, found in Danish sources from this timeframe or later, this is the only Saxo comment to be generally accepted to be about the Saxo Grammaticus. However there is no evidence that definitely proves that this comment in Absalon’s will is about our Saxo Grammaticus.
We read in the preface of Gesta Danorum Saxo’s own words that his father and grandfather both served under King Valdemar I as warriors and that he himself would like to serve King Valdemar II, though in a more spiritual way. These few lines just listed are the only concrete information that exists about Saxo Grammaticus.
It is thought he was born on Zealand, as later sources claim. His elegant Latin and Roman knowledge, used in Gesta Danorum, makes it nearly certain that he was educated outside of Denmark, maybe in one of the big church-schools in France.
Saxo Grammaticus was not his real name. He received the appellation Grammaticus, the Latin word for a teacher of letters, in the Compendium Saxonis of Chronica Jutensis, around 1342, to express delight in his use of words. With the printed press publication of Christiern Pedersen's version of the Gesta Danorum, the term Grammaticus has stuck to Saxo as being part of his name.
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Absalon (c. 1128 – March 21, 1201) was a Danish archbishop and statesman. He was the son of Asser Rig (Asser the Rich) of Fjenneslev (Zealand), at whose castle he and his brother Esbjørn (Esbern) were brought up along with the young prince Valdemar, afterwards King Valdemar I.
The family were as pious and enlightened as they were rich. They founded the monastery of Sorø as a civilizing centre, and after giving Absalon the rudiments of a sound education at home, which included not only book-lore but every manly and martial exercise, they sent him to the schools of Paris. Absalon first appears in Saxo's Gesta Danorum as a fellow-guest at Roskilde, at the banquet given in 1157 by King Sweyn to his rivals Canute and Valdemar. Both Absalon and Valdemar narrowly escaped assassination at the hands of their treacherous host on this occasion, but at length escaped to Jutland, whither Sweyn followed them, but was defeated and slain at the battle of Grathe Heath.
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Knud Johan Victor Rasmussen (June 7, 1879–December 21, 1933) was a Greenlandic polar explorer and anthropologist, known commonly as just Knud Rasmussen. He has been called the "father of Eskimology"[1] and was the first to cross the Northwest Passage via dog sled.[2] He remains well known in Greenland, Denmark and among Canadian Inuit.[3]
Rasmussen was born in Jakobshavn, Greenland, the son of a Danish missionary, the vicar Charles V. Rasmussen, and an Inuit mother, Sofie Rasmussen (nee Fleicher). He had two siblings, including a brother, Peter Lim. Rasmussen spent his early years in Greenland among the Kalaallit (Inuit) where he learned from an early age to speak the language (Kalaallisut), hunt, drive dog sleds and live in harsh Arctic conditions. "My playmates were native Greenlanders; from the earliest boyhood I played and worked with the hunters, so even the hardships of the most strenuous sledge-trips became pleasant routine for me." He was later educated in Lynge, North Zealand, Denmark. Between 1898 and 1900 he pursued an unsuccessful career as an actor and opera singer.[3][4]
He went on his first expedition in 1902–1904, known as "The Literature Expedition", with Jørgen Brønlund, Harald Moltke and Ludvig Mylius-Erichsen, to examine Inuit culture. After returning home he went on a lecture circuit and wrote The People of the Polar North (1908), a combination travel journal and scholarly account of Inuit folklore. In 1908, he married Dagmar Andersen.
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Connie Inge-Lise Nielsen (born July 3, 1965) is a Danish actress.
Nielsen was born in Frederikshavn, Denmark to an insurance clerk mother and a bus driver father. She was raised nearby in a small seaside village named Elling. She began her acting career working alongside her mother on the local revue and variety scene. At 18 she travelled to Paris, France where she worked as an actress and model, which led to further work and study in Italy — at drama school in Rome and in master classes with Lydia Styx, a teacher at il Piccolo Teatro di Milano in Milan. She lived in Italy for many years, before moving to the United States, where she still resides.
Nielsen's feature film debut was the Jerry Lewis French film, Par Où T'es Rentré? On T'a Pas Vu Sortir in 1984, followed by a role in the Italian mini-series Colletti Bianchi in 1988. She appeared in the 1991 Italian Vacanze di Natale '91 and the French film Le Paradis Absolument in 1993.
She moved to the United States in 1996 and made her first appearance in a major English-language film in 1997 as Christabella Andreoli in The Devil's Advocate, starring opposite Al Pacino and Keanu Reeves in a somewhat "revealing" role. This led to roles in films as Permanent Midnight (1998), Rushmore (1998) and Soldier (1998).
In 2000, Nielsen became known to worldwide audiences as Lucilla in Ridley Scott's internationally acclaimed Academy Award-winning epic Gladiator, where she starred opposite Russell Crowe and Joaquin Phoenix. She has since then starred in some notable American films, including Mission to Mars (2000), One Hour Photo (2002), The Hunted (2003) and Basic (2003). She also starred in the acclaimed French thriller Demonlover (2002), directed by Olivier Assayas.
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This index is generated by this cruel but working perl-script.
- ^ Jean Malaurie, 1982.
- ^ Knud Johan Victor Rasmussen, biography by Sam Alley. Minnesota State University.
- ^ a b Elizabeth Cruwys, 2003.
- ^ "Life and history:". ilumus.gl. Retrieved 2008-01-06.