From Copenhagen's origin as a hamlet which hardly anyone had ever heard of to a position as the dazzling capital of the Danish Empire, and to its current position as one of the world's most talked about as well as sung of cities is a colourful history. Copenhagen is Scandinavia's largest city and its history goes way back. The reigning monarch Queen Margrethe II can trace her ancestry back to the Viking Age and that makes Denmark the world's oldest kingdom. Among cobbled squares, narrow streets and old buildings the history lives with us to this day.There are evidence that Copenhagen existed as a settlement more than 6,000 years ago, but its first written record dates 1043 AC.Copenhagen, in those days called "Havn", meaning the harbour, was of little strategic or political importance. Most of the people in "Havn" earned their daily bread by fishing for the plentiful herring in the Øresund. In the next two centuries fishing and trading turned the small fishing village into a flourishing town. And in 1343 King Valdemar Atterdag made Copenhagen the capital of Denmark - today the seat of the government and the hometown of the Danish royal family.