History
Anholt has been settled since the New Stone Age and one may still find flint flakes on the “desert”. There have been some Old Stone Age finds as well. The island has never been the object of systematic archaeological investigation so no Bronze Age remnants have been found. Some Viking finds have been made.
The 1231 land register of King Valdemar II of Denmark shows that the king owned a house or a hunting lodge on the Sønderbjerg, the island's highest point. Anholt was thus property of the crown. In 1441 the island was under the administration of Kalø Lehn, headed by Otto Nielsen Rosenkrands.
Anholt belonged to the parish of Morup in the Danish province of Halland up until the middle of the 16th century when a church was built on the island. The island remained Danish when Denmark ceded Halland to Sweden in 1645. There is a story that explains the omission by asserting that a negotiator had left a glass of beer placed over the island on the map during the peace negotiations. A more plausible explanation is that Swedish forces had not conquered the fairly remote island and that Sweden didn't care.
In 1668 Anholt was sold to the tax farmer Peder Jensen Grove. Six years later his widow married Hans Rostgaard of Krogerup and the island then came to belong to the Rostgaard von der Maase family. Most recently, the lawyer Jens Christian Rostgaard von der Maase, of Copenhagen, has owned the greater and protected part of the island.
Read more about this topic: Anholt (Denmark)
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