Treaty of Ribe an impossible task of raising 100,000 silver marks to redeem his country. Denmark had effectively been dissolved and the country was left without a king between 1332 and 1340. In 1340, King Valdemar IV of Denmark began a more-than-twenty-year-long struggle to reclaim his father's kingdom. Although eventually succeeding in regaining control of Zealand, Funen, Jutland, and the Scanian lands, he failed to obtain control of Schleswig, whose ducal House of Estridsen managed to continue its virtual independence. To gain influence over the province, Valdemar married Helvig of Schleswig, the only daughter of Duke Eric II of Schleswig. In 1372, he
Jutland border between the Danish and German realms from c. 850 to 1864. Although most of Schleswig-Holstein is geographically part of the Jutland peninsula, most German residents there would not identify themselves with Jutland or even as "Jutlanders", but rather with "North Germany" () and Schleswig-Holstein, considering themselves "Northern Germans" () and "Schleswig-Holsteiner". The medieval law Code of Jutland applied to Schleswig until 1900 when it was replaced by the Prussian Civil Code. Some rarely used clauses of the Jutlandic Code still apply north of the Eider, even some cities south of the river- all of Rendsburg and more than half