[4] Christian was born at Frederiksborg Castle in Denmark on 12 April 1577 as the third child and eldest son of King Frederick II of Denmark–Norway and Sofie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin.

It was led by chancellor Niels Kaas (1535–1594) and consisted of the Rigsraadet council members Peder Munk (1534–1623), Jørgen Ottesen Rosenkrantz (1523–1596) and Christoffer Valkendorff (1525–1601).

[5] Twelve days later, on 29 August 1596, Christian IV was crowned at the Church of Our Lady in Copenhagen by the Bishop of Zealand, Peder Jensen Vinstrup (1549–1614).

Christian had to depend mainly upon hired mercenary troops as was common practice in the times—well before the establishment of standing armies—augmented by native peasant levies recruited for the most part from the peasantry on the crown domains.

This inspired Christian to initiate a policy of expanding Denmark-Norway's overseas trade as part of the mercantilist wave fashionable in Europe.

The visit was generally judged to be a success, although the heavy drinking indulged in by English and Danes alike caused some unfavourable comments: both Christian and James had an ability to consume great amounts of alcohol, while remaining lucid, which most of their courtiers did not share.

Sir John Harington described an entertainment at Theobalds, a masque of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, as a drunken fiasco, where most of the players simply fell over from the effects of too much wine.

[14] Christian IV visited England again in August 1614, coming incognito to surprise his sister at Denmark House,[15] accompanied only by Andrew Sinclair and a page.

Upon arriving in May 1620, the establishment of a colony in Ceylon failed,[21] but instead the Nayak of Tanjore (now Thanjavur in Tamil Nadu) turned out to be interested in trading opportunities and a treaty was negotiated granting the Danes the village of Tranquebar (or Tarangamabadi) on India's south coast[22] and the right to construct a "stone house" (Fort Dansborg) and levy taxes.

Christian compelled King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden to give way on all essential points at the resulting Treaty of Knäred of 20 January 1613.

He skillfully took advantage of the alarm of the German Protestants after the Battle of White Mountain in 1620, to secure co-adjutorship of the See of Bremen for his son Frederick (September 1621).

Despite the growing power of Roman Catholics in North Germany, and the threat to the Danish holdings in the Schleswig-Holstein duchies, Christian for a time stayed his hand.

The urgent solicitations of other powers, and his fear that Gustavus Adolphus should supplant him as the champion of the Protestant cause, finally led him to enter the war on 9 May 1625.

[5] Christian had not thoroughly planned the advance against the combined forces of the Holy Roman Emperor and the Catholic League, as promises of military support from the Netherlands and England did not materialise.

[5] Christian now formed an alliance with Sweden on 1 January 1628, as he and Gustavus Adolphus shared the reluctance of German expansion in the Baltic region.

Thus with the help of Sweden, the superior sea-power enabled Denmark to tide over her worst difficulties, and in May 1629 Christian was able to conclude peace with the emperor in the Treaty of Lübeck, without any diminution of territory.

To compensate for lacking export revenues, and also in order to stifle the Swedish advances in the Thirty Years' War, Christian enacted a number of increases in the Sound Dues throughout the 1630s.

[7] Christian gained both in popularity and influence at home, and he hoped to increase his external power still further with the assistance of his sons-in-law, Corfitz Ulfeldt and Hannibal Sehested, who now came prominently forward.

[5] Christian contacted the Roman Catholic part of the Thirty Years' War, and offered to broker a deal with Sweden.

However, his mediating was highly skewed in favour of the Holy Roman Emperor, and was a transparent attempt at minimising the Swedish influence in the Baltics.

[7] Sweden was able, thanks to their conquests in the Thirty Years' War, to attack Denmark from the south as well as the east; the Dutch alliance promised to secure them at sea.

Fortunately for him, the Swedish government delayed hostilities in Scania until February 1644, and the Danes were able to make adequate defensive preparations and save the important fortress of Malmö.

[30] Another attempt to transport Torstensson and his army to the Danish islands by a large Swedish fleet was frustrated by Christian IV in person on 1 July 1644.

As Christian stood on the quarterdeck of the Trinity, a cannon close by was exploded by a Swedish cannonball, and splinters of wood and metal wounded the king in thirteen places, blinding one eye and flinging him to the deck.

But the Swedish fleet escaped, and the annihilation of the Danish fleet by the combined navies of Sweden and the Netherlands, after an obstinate fight between Fehmarn and Lolland at the end of September, exhausted the military resources of Denmark and compelled Christian to accept the mediation of France and the Netherlands; and peace was finally signed with the Treaty of Brömsebro on 8 February 1645.

[5] Here Denmark had to cede Gotland, Ösel and (for thirty years) Halland, while Norway lost the two provinces Jämtland and Härjedalen, giving Sweden the supremacy of the Baltic Sea.

In 1647 he gave the crown privileges of the Røros Copper Works to his banker and his privy councillor (Geheimrat) Joachim Irgens von Westervick, including rights to forests and water resources within a circle of diameter 90 kilometers.

When the king was busy overseeing the reparations and re-building of the fortress at Oslo, he lived in the country all summer, and at the same time tried to establish a centre for producing iron at Eiker in Buskerud.

He had courage, a vivid sense of duty, an indefatigable love of work, and all the inquisitive zeal and inventive energy of a born reformer.

[5] With his first wife, Anne Catherine of Brandenburg he fathered the following children: With his second wife, Kirsten Munk, he had 12 children, though the youngest, Dorothea Elisabeth, was rumoured to be the daughter of Kirsten's lover, Otto Ludwig: With Kirsten Madsdatter: With Karen Andersdatter: With Vibeke Kruse: In the 1621 Treaty of The Hague and Treaty of Bremen between Denmark-Norway and the Dutch Republic, Christian was styled "Lord Christian the Fourth, King of all Denmark and Norway, the Goths and the Wends, duke of Schleswig, Holstein, Stormarn, and Ditmarsh, count of Oldenburg and Delmenhorst, etc.