Why doesn't Denmark own the Baltic Sea?

by Rehalapa

I know Denmark historically was often under Swedish rule, so I supposed they're included in this question too.

My main curiosity revolves around the Danish straits, and how, with such a bottle neck/strangle hold on the Baltic, did they not have a massive advantage in trade over all other Baltic/Northern countries. How did Baltic countries get access to the North Sea/Atlantic? Did their ships have to pay tolls going through Denmark. If so how much? What about military?

It seems if they did have to pay tolls imports would end up being rather expensive for those countries. Again seemingly giving those who controlled the straits a fair amount of influence and power. How does/did this effect their economies and politics?

I'm interested in Medieval period to modern day. But any information would be interesting! Thanks!

Cixila

First off, Denmark was not historically under Swedish control. There was a Swedish War (can't remember which of them) that they lost so badly that effectively all of Denmark was occupied except for Copenhagen, but most of the territory was restored after the conflict.

As for controlling the access to it, Denmark actually did that. It was known as Øresundstolden (the Øresund Tariff). It was introduced in 1429 by Erik the 7th of Denmark (aka Erik af Pommern) and was made possible by the Danish control of Helsingør (in modern Denmark) and Helsingborg (in modern Sweden) and the pressence of a fleet garrisson and cannon batteries on each side of the straight. Eventually exceptions were made for the German Hansas.

The access itself was easy enough, if you just paid up, although the tariffs grew to be so high that they were lowered or ignored as part of peace treaties. It was actually cheaper at one point to transport goods by land to avoid Øresund entirely. This was raised as a concern by some of the merchants in Copenhagen in 1831, which were met with a slight decrease in tariffs. In 1855 the US said that it wasn't particularly fond of the system either and accepted invitations to negotiate a complete stop to the collection. In 1857 a treaty between Denmark, the US, and several of the most active trade nations was agreed upon (likely to avoid diplomatic problems or conflicts with its neighbours). This gave Denmark a one time payment of 33,5 million rigsdalere (about 12 years worth of tariffs at that point) in exchange for the abolition of collecting that specific tariff and a continuation of some services by Denmark.

If you are interested in the raw numbers, then here are the ones I could quickly find (my sources don't say if it is adjusted for inflation, so I don't know for certain)

  • in 1497: 4.700 rigsdalere
  • in 1560: 24.000 rigsdalere
  • in 1567: 133.000 rigsdalere (after introduction of new categories)
  • in 1639: 620.000 rigsdalere (after further increases introduced by Christian the 4th. This eventually led to bad relations with the Netherlands, who supported Sweden in Torstensson's War between 1643-1645, which resulted in a significant decrease in tariff levels. After another war in 1658 Sweden was entirely exempt until 1720)
  • at the turn of the century: about 500.000 rigsdalere (the trade expanded to a point that this tariff alone was about 10% of the Danish state's revenue)
  • in 1856: almost 2.800.000 rigsdalere (if the 33,5 million were indeed worth 12 years of tariffs)

TLDR: the traders and nations were really not fans of the tariffs and control exerted by Denmark, so they threw a ton of money at the Danish government in the 19th century to make them drop it. They agreed and that's why it's not controlled anymore