Denmark’s biggest island holds two-fifths of its people
Zealand covers 7,031 square kilometres—the largest island in Denmark proper—and held about 2.32 million residents on 1 January 2020, some forty percent of the nation. Bridges tie it to Funen, Amager, and, via Øresund, to Sweden’s Scania across the sound.
Europe’s thirteenth-largest island and fourth most populous, it carries Copenhagen (1.3–1.4 million in 2020) mostly on its eastern shore and partly on Amager. Roskilde, Hillerød, and other towns stitch the interior. Administratively it splits between the Capital Region and the more rural Region Zealand. Great Belt Fixed Link reaches Funen via Sprogø; Storstrøm and Farø bridges serve the south.
Danish Sjælland may relate to an old word for lake or sea rather than modern ‘soul’; English Zealand may echo German Seeland. It has no etymological link to New Zealand, named for Dutch Zeeland. Tribal Danes spread from Zealand and Scania speaking early North Germanic; Valdemar’s thirteenth-century Zealandic Law was a regional civil code before national uniformity.
From the late 16th century the crown owned most of North Zealand, using it chiefly for royal hunting, while manors dominated the economy elsewhere. Ringsted and then Roskilde were the island's first political and religious centres before Copenhagen took over. Early industry outside the capital included the watermills of Mølleåen, the Kronborg arms factory at Hellebæk and Frederick's Works at Frederiksværk, and the island's first railway opened between Copenhagen and Roskilde in 1847.
Norse myth in the Gylfaginning says the goddess Gefjun tricked Gylfi, king of Sweden, and hauled away a piece of his land to make Zealand, leaving a hole that filled with water; the story names Mälaren, though Vänern's shape is sometimes thought a closer match. The island is roughly the size of Crete and lies north of Lolland, Falster and Møn. Its highest natural point is Kobanke, at 122.9 m, near Rønnede, while Gyldenløveshøj reaches 126 m only thanks to a 17th-century man-made mound. Geologists named the Selandian age of the Paleocene after the island.
Source: Zealand
