Oluf van Steenwinckel was a Danish

Denmark

Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...

 building master and engineer, probably the son of Hans van Steenwinckel the Younger

Hans van Steenwinckel the Younger

Hans van Steenwinckel the Younger was a Flemish-Danish architect who specialised in the Dutch Renaissance style, typical of prestigious Danish buildings from the first half of the 17th century...

. In the 1640s he worked at Nykøbing Castle among other places and from 1651-52 he was Copenhagen's first City Surveyor (Danish: Stadskonduktør), involved in the cedestral

Cadastre

A cadastre , using a cadastral survey or cadastral map, is a comprehensive register of the metes-and-bounds real property of a country...

 registration and parcelling of Frederick III

Frederick III of Denmark

Frederick III was king of Denmark and Norway from 1648 until his death. He instituted absolute monarchy in Denmark and Norway in 1660, confirmed by law in 1665 as the first in western historiography. He was born the second-eldest son of Christian IV of Denmark and Anne Catherine of Brandenburg...

's New Copenhagen. In June 1659, during the Northern Wars

Northern Wars

Northern Wars is a term used for a series of wars fought in northern and northeastern Europe in the 16th and 17th century. An internationally agreed nomenclature for these wars has not yet been devised...

, he participated in a failed attempt to recapture Kronborg Castle

Kronborg Castle

Kronborg is a star fortress situated near the town of Helsingør on the extreme northeastern tip of Zealand at the narrowest point of the Øresund, the sound between Denmark and Sweden...

 and was executed

Capital punishment

Capital punishment, the death penalty, or execution is the sentence of death upon a person by the state as a punishment for an offence. Crimes that can result in a death penalty are known as capital crimes or capital offences. The term capital originates from the Latin capitalis, literally...

by the Swedish.