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ecofan74 Teacher
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Posted by ecofan74 on Friday June 12, 2009 at 1:18 AMAt the outset of the seventeenth century, life in Denmark differed very little from elsewhere in Northern Europe. Living on the North Sea to the west and the Baltic Sea to the east, Danes would have had to combat very harsh weather, particularly during what were often very brutal winters. In addition, essentially being a series of islands, Danes had to rely a great deal on the Baltic and North Seas for their livelihoods. This being said, it was not significantly different to live in Denmark than it would have been to live elsewhere in Scandinavia, though it was usually far colder in the north.
The clothing that people wore in 1601 Denmark would have connsisted of roughly the same fashions to be found elsewhere in Northern Europe. Men would wear tunics with short breeches that went down to about the middle of the thighs with tights to cover the rest of their legs. Men (usually men of some means) wore a ruff around their necks, though they did not necessarily reach the kind of circumference one would find in an Elizabethan ruff. For Danish women, their form of dress differed little from their Northern European counterparts. They wore long dresses with ruffs and very restrictive corsets.
Ultimately, it would not have been qualitatively different to live in seventeenth-century Denmark than it would have been to live in the Germany or England of the same period. The weather conditions in England and Denmark would have been comparable, as both bordered the often rough and unforgiving North Sea.
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