The Audacity of Peter Tordenskjold: The Naval Captain Who Asked His Enemy For Ammo in The Middle of a Battle

On November 12, 1720 Peter Tordenskjold died in a sword duel. It will not sound familiar to most people, but he was one of the great national heroes of Denmark and Norway—countries that were once united, a daring sailor who would be the equivalent of what Nelson is to the British, Ruyter to the Dutch, Jones to the Americans or Bazán to the Spanish. Remembered in several popular songs and honored with several statues, streets, books, films and even a festival, a corvette of the Danish navy and a ship of the Norwegian navy are named after him. He is also cited in the Danish royal anthem. “The end of Peter Wessel Tordenskiold's naval battle in the North Sea”, 1919, by Christian Ferdinand Andreas Mølsted Peter Jansen Wessel (Tordenskjold is a nickname given to him in 1716) was born in Trondheim in October 1690. At that time that city was part of the Dano-Norwegian kingdom, also known as Oldenburg after the titular dynasty on the throne since 1448. That union, which also included the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, as well as dependent territories (Iceland, the Faroe Islands and Greenland) and colonies (the Danish Antilles, the African Danish Gold Coast, the Asian Nicobar Islands and the Indian cities of Serampore and Tharangambadi), had been forged in 1536 as a result of a failed attempt to merge the Scandinavian states, the Union of Kalmar of 1397. The unification failed because the Swedish aristocracy, suspicious of the dominant position that Denmark had thanks to the fact that the crown remained in the hands of Queen Margrethe I, ended up leaving in 1521, leaving their partners alone and choosing their own monarch, Gustav Vasa. The Swedes and Danes clashed in an armed conflict between 1611 and 1613 over commercial control of the Baltic and later the Thirty Years' War further complicated the relationship, leaving Sweden as an emerging and dominant power in Northern Europe.