Freden i Kiel 1814: England, Sverige, Danmark og de nordatlantiske øer

Different theories have been proposed to explain why the Faroe Islands, Iceland and Greenland remained under Danish sovereignty after the Treaty of Kiel, when the Danish Crown had to give up Norway to the Swedish Crown. While older research maintains that the Danish negotiator played a key role in this, more recent research has paid more attention to the role of Sweden and especially England. It has e.g. been claimed that the English really intended to annex the North Atlantic Islands to the English Crown, but that they in the last moment changed their minds and directly caused that the islands remained under the Danish Crown. In this article, it will be argued that even if it is likely that England wanted to prevent that the Atlantic islands became Swedish, there is no evidence to support that England had this role; and that the sources directly appear to disprove that the English had any intentions to annex the North Atlantic Islands to the English Crown. It is more conceivable that a lack of interest for the North Atlantic Islands was the reason for that they remained Danish.