As stadtholder of the Duchies of Holstein and Schleswig in 1526, and as viceroy of Norway in 1529, Christian III displayed considerable administrative ability.

His outspokenness brought him into conflict, not only with the Roman Catholic dominated State Council (Rigsraad), but also with his cautious and temporizing father.

[3][9][10] Count Christopher had the support of most of Zealand, Scania, the Hanseatic League, and the small farmers of northern Jutland and Funen.

Realizing his hold on the throne was in imminent danger, Christian III negotiated a deal with the Hansa States which allowed him to send his trusted advisor Johan Rantzau north with an army of Protestant German mercenaries.

The first six years of Christian III's reign were marked by a contest between the Danish Rigsraadet and the German counsellors, both of whom sought to rule through the king.

Though the Danish party won a victory at the outset, by obtaining the insertion in the charter of provisions stipulating that only native-born Danes should fill the highest dignities of the state, the king's German counsellors continued paramount during his early reign.

This occurred officially on 30 October 1536 when the reconstituted State Council adopted the Lutheran Ordinances designed by German theologian Johannes Bugenhagen (1485–1558), which outlined church organization, liturgy, and accepted religious practice.

At the High Court (Herredag) of Copenhagen in 1542, the nobility of Denmark voted Christian a twentieth part of all their property to pay off his heavy debt to German mercenaries.

This provided a counterpoise to the persistent hostility of Charles V, who was determined to support the hereditary claims of his nieces, the daughters of Christian II, to the Scandinavian kingdoms.

[3][22][5] Until this peace, Christian III also ruled the entire Duchies of Holstein and of Schleswig in the name of his then still minor half-brothers John the Elder (Hans den Ældre) and Adolf.

They determined their youngest brother Frederick for a career as Diocesan administrator of an ecclesiastical state within the Holy Roman Empire.

The estates, whose revenues were assigned to the parties, made Holstein and Schleswig look like patchworks, technically inhibiting the emergence of separate new duchies.

[27] Christian III died on New Year's Day 1559 at Koldinghus, and was interred in Roskilde Cathedral in a funerary monument designed by Flemish sculptor Cornelis Floris de Vriendt (1514–1575).

[28][29] In 1579, Frederick II commissioned Dutch artists to erect a memorial to Christian III at Roskilde Cathedral.

[30] Christian III received an honorary stone at the Walk of Fame at Landskrona which Sweden's Carl XVI Gustaf inaugurated in 2013.