[1] Resen spent a year at the University of Padua, where he received his first academic position as legal expert and advisor.

He then journeyed on to Trento, Augsburg, Regensburg, through Saxony, Brunswick and Lüneburg to Hamburg and finally to Lübeck and Copenhagen, where he arrived in November 1653.

[2] As a young scholar of great hope and a member of a family who had a prestigious name in the academic world, Resen was an obvious candidate for a professorship at the University of Copenhagen.

Resen was also the first to make the Edda, Völuspá, and Hávamál available in printed form; he published these works with Danish and Latin translations.

In 1664, he was designated as the mayor of Copenhagen by the king; in 1669 he became an assessor of the Supreme Court; and in 1672 he took up the office of president in his city of residence.

He curated a large collection of handwritten legal manuscripts and other documents pertaining to Copenhagen's history, some of which still exist.

With Atlas Danicus, Resen set out to give a description of Denmark, detailing geography, history, flora, and fauna within the nation.

This included several copper and wood engravings that he commissioned of maps, bird's eye views of regions, and assorted images.

Towards the end of Resen's life, a few abbreviated extracts were published by other scholars, including the priest Johannes Brunsmand [da; no; sv].

She successfully made steps toward publishing the work, entrusting historian Christian Aarsleb [da] with the printing.

Anna died a year after her husband, and Aarsleb took up a position as a village priest in 1692 and abandoned his intent to publish the Atlas Danicus.

Resen's folios and the plate engravings he had commissioned for the atlas became part of the Copenhagen University Library.

[1] Several of the copper engravings created by cartographer Johan Huusman which were held by the library survive to this day, including maps of Jutland, Bornholm, Møn, and Samsø.

[4] Only a manuscript of seven volumes of folios survived, as they had been prepared for publication and privately held by Vincents Lerche [da].

A transcript of the seven surviving volumes of Atlas Danicus were briefly loaned to the architect Lauritz de Thurah, who made a copy of the work for his reference while compiling his own history of Copenhagen.

The transcribed copy created by Thurah was donated to the Royal Library, and remains intact to this day.