Duelling originated among the nobles of south-west Europe, who developed a special set of rules for the procedure in the 1500s: challenge, agreed rules, identical weapons, seconds, and so on. Early duels were usually fought with swords, but over the course of the 1800s it became common to use pistols for duelling. Sets comprising a pair of identical weapons were soon developed, and you can see several examples of such weapons here at the castle.
On the introduction of absolutism in Denmark, the king was keen to use his absolute power to ban duelling. He therefore appointed a commission tasked with ending the practice.
Two students fought the last known public duel in Denmark, which took place in Copenhagen in 1910. The duellists fought with sabres, and the confrontation came to an abrupt end when one of the participants was wounded in the thigh. Duels continued to be fought in secret in Denmark over the following years, however. For example, one of the two afore-mentioned students took part in two more duels in his lifetime. It seems that duelling gradually disappeared as a practice around the end of World War I.