Christianization of Scandinavia of making the Danes Christian. King Gorm the Old (Danish: "den Gamle"), who was known in his lifetime as Gorm the Sleepy, was the first king of all of Denmark. Until his day, Danish kings were presumably local kings without influence over all the Danes. Denmark consisted of Jutland and Schleswig and Holstein all the way down to the Eider River, the main islands of Zealand, Funen, Langeland, the nearby lesser islands, and Skåneland. Gorm was said to be "hard and heathen", but Queen Thyra's influence permitted Christians to live more or less without trouble. Gorm and Queen Thyra's son,
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