Historical topographical maps can be a great source to understand how we have changed our landscapes over time. For the period since the 1930’ies you will often find historical aerial photography and since the 1980’ies, it is also relevant to use historical satellite images, see the article on “using historic satellite based remote sensing data“
In Demark, the main historical detailed natural map series are:
- Videnskabernes Selskabs Kort over Danmark og Slesvig (1766-1841)
- Høje målebordsblade(1864-1899)
- Lave målebordsblade (1901-1971)
- Centimetre kort (1980-2001)
- A Wikipedia article with legends for these maps
All of theas maps are availabul from dataforsyningen ( https://dataforsyningen.dk) as web app, wms and also in the QGIS plugin. For ArcGIS users, they are available by joining the Geoinfo Open Data and accessing them from the portal
A problem with the national coverage as wms or the web app is that they do not state when in the mapping period the map is from lots has happened in the danish landscape in the period 1901 to 1971 If you need to get acces to a map from a specigic year you need to go to “historiske kort på nettet” (https://hkpn.gst.dk/). where you can select a specific year of revision. These maps are, alas not georeferenced, and you will need to do this your self see the article georeferencing images
The royal library also has a collection of historical maps: http://www5.kb.dk/maps/kortsa/2012/jul/kortatlas/subject210/da/?
Some key literature on the subject (in Danish)
Korsgård, P. (2006) Kort som kilde – en håndbog om historiske kort og deres anvendelse. ISBN: 87-7423-100-6. Can be downoaded from http://topograf.dk/kort%20som%20kilde.html
Svenningsen, S.R. (2021) Historical maps as source to the history of mapping. From the topographic maps of the Danish General Staff to Soviet Cold War Military maps. Geoforum Perspektiv, vol 20:38. https://doi.org/10.5278/ojs.perspektiv.v20i38.6586
A online presentation by Peder Dam