Frederik IX of Denmark

Biography

Frederik was born in 1899 at Sorgenfri Palace north of Copenhagen, the elder son of Prince Christian and Princess Alexandrine of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. He became crown prince in 1912 when his father succeeded as Christian X, and from 1918 was also crown prince of Iceland, a title that lapsed when Iceland became a republic in 1944. Breaking with royal custom, he chose the navy over the army: he studied at the Royal Danish Naval Academy and the University of Copenhagen and served in the Royal Danish Navy from 1917 to 1947, reaching the rank of rear admiral.

In 1935 he married Princess Ingrid of Sweden in Stockholm; they had three daughters, Margrethe, Benedikte and Anne-Marie. During the German occupation he acted as regent in 1942-43 after his father was injured in a riding accident.

He became king on his father's death in April 1947. His reign coincided with Denmark's transformation from an agricultural society into a modern welfare state, with women entering the labour market in the boom of the 1960s, and with new expectations of a constitutional monarch. Because he had no sons, the Act of Succession adopted after the 1953 referendum allowed women to inherit the throne when they had no brothers, making his eldest daughter heir in place of his brother Knud.

He fell ill shortly after his New Year's address at the end of 1971 and died in Copenhagen on 14 January 1972. Margrethe II succeeded him, and at his wish he was buried outside Roskilde Cathedral rather than inside it.