Oswald Danes

Oswald Danes is a fictional character in the science fiction series Torchwood, portrayed by American actor Bill Pullman. The character was promoted as one of five new main characters to join Torchwood in its fourth series, Torchwood: Miracle Day (2011), as part of a new co-production between Torchwood's British network, BBC One, and its American financiers on US premium television network Starz. Pullman appears in eight of the ten episodes, and is credited as a series regular. Whilst reaction to the serial and Pullman's character was mixed, Pullman's portrayal was praised by critics and in 2012 he received a Saturn Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor on Television.

The narrative of Miracle Day focuses on an event in which death ceases to occur across the world and the gravely-wounded continue to remain alive. On the first day of this phenomenon, the so-called Miracle Day, Oswald, a former schoolteacher and convicted paedophile–murderer, survives his own execution, drawing global attention, and subsequently is released from prison on a legal technicality. After being offered both exposure and protection by Public Relations expert Jilly Kitzinger (Lauren Ambrose), he becomes her client, which helps him gain more publicity. Following a series of events he ends up aiding Torchwood, a team composed of two former alien-hunters and two former CIA agents, on their mission to restore death to the world. Danes is killed off in the final episode of the series; when death is restored he takes one of the Torchwood team's enemies out in a murder–suicide.

List of Danes

This is a list of notable Danish people.

Actors

Danes

Danes (Danish: danskere) are the citizens of Denmark, most of whom speak Danish and consider themselves to be of Danish ethnicity.

The first mention of Danes are from the 6th century in Jordanes' Getica, by Procopius, and by Gregory of Tours. The first mention of Danes within the Danish territory is on the Jelling Rune Stone which states how Harald Bluetooth converted the Danes to Christianity in the 10th century. Denmark has been continuously inhabited since this period; and, although much cultural and ethnic influence and immigration from all over the world has entered Denmark since then, present day Danes tend to see themselves as ethnic descendants of the early tribal Danes mentioned in the historic sources. Whether this is true or not, the Danish Royal Family can certainly trace their family line back to Gorm the Old (d. 958 AD) in the Viking Age, and perhaps even before that to some of the preceding semi-mythical rulers.

Since the formulation of a Danish national identity in the 19th century, the defining criteria for being Danish has been speaking the Danish language and identifying Denmark as a homeland. Danish national identity was built on a basis of peasant culture and Lutheran theology, theologian N. F. S. Grundtvig and his popular movement played a prominent part in the process.

Danes (Germanic tribe)

The Danes were a Northern people residing in what more or less comprised modern-day Denmark in Iron Age Scandinavia. They are mentioned in the 6th century in Jordanes' Getica, by Procopius, and by Gregory of Tours. The Danes spoke Old Norse (dǫnsk tunga), which was shared by the Danes, the people in Norway and Sweden and later Iceland.

In his description of Scandza, Jordanes says that the Dani were of the same stock as the Suetidi ("Swedes") and expelled the Heruli and took their lands.

According to the 12th century author Sven Aggesen, the mythical King Dan gave name to the Danes.

The Old English poems Widsith and Beowulf, as well as works by later Scandinavian writers (notably by Saxo Grammaticus (c. 1200)), provide some of the written references to Danes. Archaeology has revealed and continues to reveal insights to their culture, organization and way of life.

Iron Age

In the Nordic Iron Age, the Danes were based in present-day Denmark, the southern part of present-day Sweden, including Scania and Schleswig, now in Northern Germany. In Schleswig, they initiated the large fortification of Danevirke to mark the southern border of their realm. It was extended several times, also in the centuries after the Iron Age.

Danes (Kent cricketer)

Danes (first name and dates unknown) was an English cricketer who played in major matches for Kent during the 1740s. He is recorded in cricket's second-oldest surviving scorecard playing for Kent against an All-England Eleven at the Artillery Ground on Monday, 18 June 1744. He scored six runs and held one catch. Kent won by 1 wicket.

As Danes had established his reputation by 1744, he must have been active for some years previously and his career probably began in the 1730s. Very few players were mentioned by name in contemporary reports and there are no other references to Danes.

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