The Danish krone is the currency used in Denmark and the Danish dependency of Greenland. While the Faroe Islands is also a dependency of Denmark, it has a separate currency called the Faroese Króna that is on a one to one parity with the Danish krone. The plural form is "kroner" and one krone is divided into 100 øre, singular and plural. The ISO 4217 code is DKK.
The krone was introduced as legal tender in Denmark in 1873, and was a result of the Scandinavian Monetary Union, which lasted until World War I. The initial parties to the monetary union were the Scandinavian countries of Sweden and Denmark, with Norway joining two years later.
The name of the common currency was the "krone" in Denmark and Norway, and the "krona" in Sweden, which literally means "crown" in English. After the dissolution of the monetary union Denmark, Norway, and Sweden all decided to keep the name of their respective and now separate currencies.
Denmark negotiated special "opt-outs" of the Maastricht Treaty that allowed the country to preserve the krone while the majority of the European Union adopted a common currency known as the Euro in 1999. A referendum held in 2000 reconfirmed the population's attachment to the krone. As of early 2004, the Liberal government of Anders Fogh Rasmussen was planning on holding another referendum on the adoption of the euro in the near future.
The krone is closely pegged to the euro via the ERM II, the European Union's exchange rate mechanism. Before the advent of the euro, the krone was linked to the Deutsche Mark, thus keeping the krone stable at all times.
