Denmark–Norway is a political entity consisting of the united kingdoms of Denmark and Norway, including overseas Norwegian dependencies of Iceland, Greenland, and the Faroe Islands.Norway had been an influential kingdom of Europe until the mid-fourteenth century when the Black Plague killed more than half the population, a worse case than the neighboring states of Sweden and Denmark.

This had forced Norway to be dependent upon Denmark in a personal union when Olaf of Denmark, who had inherited the kingdom of Denmark from his grandfather at the age offive, inherits Norway on the death of his father Haakon IV of Norway.

Olaf himself dies young and his mother Margaret I of Denmark, who had been his regent, takes over the personal union, and in 1397 forms the Kalmar Union with Sweden.