Introduction to maps (of Denmark)?

Googling for Denmark Shapefile leads to this website: http://www.vdstech.com/map_data.htm
Where a few clicks lead to downloading a set of shapefiles (different levels of subdividing the country, hopefully you know more about what they correspond to than I do, about all I know about Denmark is from Hamlet, the fact that I have some ancestors from there (but I don't remember which branch), and how to make aebleskivers).

These can be read into R using the maptools package as:

library(maptools)
dmk1 <- readShapePoly('g:/downloads/DNK_adm/DNK0')
dmk2 <- readShapePoly('g:/downloads/DNK_adm/DNK1')
dmk3 <- readShapePoly('g:/downloads/DNK_adm/DNK2')

simple plots can be done like:

plot(dmk1)
plot(dmk2)
plot(dmk3)

a little more complex with:

plot(dmk3, col=topo.colors(248))

though of course replacing topo.colors(248) with something that is meaningful.  If you need more control, then see the sp package.

Hope this helps,

--
Gregory (Greg) L. Snow Ph.D.
Statistical Data Center
Intermountain Healthcare
greg.snow at imail.org
801.408.8111

-----Original Message-----
From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-
project.org] On Behalf Of Peter Jepsen
Sent: Friday, February 06, 2009 1:18 PM
To: r-help at r-project.org
Subject: [R] Introduction to maps (of Denmark)?

Dear R-listers,

I am using R for Windows Vista 64-bit. I have no experience working
with
maps, but now I have to plot a map of Denmark in which each Danish
county is color-coded according to its incidence rate of a particular
disease. My problem is that I don't know where to start. I have read
the
help files to packages like 'mapplot', and their examples indicate that
I am on the right track, but where do I find a suitably detailed map of
Denmark, and which format should I prefer? The terminology in the help
files etc. is overwhelming.

Thank you in advance for any help.

Best regards,
Peter.

***
R version 2.8.1 (2008-12-22)
i386-pc-mingw32

locale:
LC_COLLATE=Danish_Denmark.1252;LC_CTYPE=Danish_Denmark.1252;LC_MONETARY
=
Danish_Denmark.1252;LC_NUMERIC=C;LC_TIME=Danish_Denmark.1252

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base