Speculation on Denmark, Lutherans, Emigrating, and Jansons

Looking online to understand Danish history, this article sums it up best for our purposes, I think.  If our ancestors really were from Denmark, and if they were able to leave in the 1530s when things got rough, then they couldn't have been unskilled poor people. It was 450 miles to Horrenburg near the  Rhine river...a trip by horseback and wagon, I suppose, but not a safe journey.

And, might they have left earlier?  Or, later?  The earliest JANSON ancestor I have treed (☺) is Johann Adam Janson, born in Baiertal, Germany (west of Balzfeld) in 1709.  The Lutheran revolution in Denmark happened 170 years earlier.  
Evidently, being traceable wasn't uppermost in the Janson mind right then.


Anyway, a little history won't hurt you--g'head and read:

Lutheran Denmark, Norway and Iceland: AD 1536-1550
The nobles of Denmark's electoral council, the rigsraad, depose Christian II in 1523 and elect to the throne his uncle Frederick, duke of Schleswig-Holstein. Frederick I rarely visits his kingdom of Denmark. But when he does so, the rigsraad is alarmed to observe that he appears to sympathize with the Lutheran heresy. On his death in 1533 the Catholic majority in the rigsraad attempts to withhold the crown from Frederick's son, Christian, who is known to be an even more committed Lutheran. The result is a civil war, which ends in Christian's favour.
Christian III becomes king of Denmark (and with it Norway and Iceland) in July 1536 after capturing Copenhagen. He immediately arrests the Catholic bishops, confiscates their property and dissolves the monasteries. Vast funds flow into the royal exchequer. In October of that same year the Danish Lutheran Church is formally established. Next it is the turn of Norway, whose monasteries bring the crown further riches. The Norwegian Lutheran Church is in existence by 1539. Iceland resists a little longer, but it too is Lutheran by 1550. Brought to the new faith in a few short years, on the personal conviction of one powerful ruler, all three countries nevertheless remain firmly Lutheran.

VIA


Oh, and here's a good explanation of the History of Lutheranism with much of the stuff the nuns omitted.


Yer welcome.