Danes (, ), or Danish people, are an ethnic group and nationality native to Denmark and a modern nation identified with the country of Denmark. This connection may be ancestral, legal, historical, or cultural.
History
Early history
Denmark has been inhabited by various Germanic peoples since ancient times, including the Angles, Cimbri, Jutes, Herules, Teutones and others.
A 2025 study in Nature found genetic evidence of an influx of central European population after about 500 ce into the region later ruled by the Danes.
Viking Age
160px|thumb|left|[[Ogier the Dane (Holger Danske) at Kronborg Castle is an important national icon from the Viking age.]]
The first mention of Danes within Denmark is on the Jelling Rune Stone, which mentions the conversion of the Danes to Christianity by Harald Bluetooth in the 10th century. Between and the early 980s, Bluetooth established a kingdom in the lands of the Danes, stretching from Jutland to Scania. Around the same time, he received a visit from a German missionary who, by surviving an ordeal by fire according to legend, convinced Harold to convert to Christianity.
The following years saw the Danish Viking expansion, which incorporated Norway and England into the Danish North Sea Empire. After the death of Canute the Great in 1035, England broke away from Danish control. Canute's nephew Sweyn Estridson (1020–1074) re-established strong royal Danish authority and built a good relationship with the archbishop of Bremen, at that time the archbishop of all Scandinavia. Over the next centuries, the Danish empire expanded throughout the southern Baltic coast.
As a concept, det danske folk (the Danish people) played an important role in 19th-century ethnic nationalism and refers to self-identification rather than a legal status. Use of the term is most often restricted to a historical context; the historic German-Danish struggle regarding the status of the Duchy of Schleswig vis-à-vis a Danish nation-state. It describes people of Danish nationality, both in Denmark and elsewhere–most importantly, ethnic Danes in both Denmark proper and the former Danish Duchy of Schleswig. Excluded from this definition are people from the formerly Norway, Faroe Islands, and Greenland; members of the German minority; and members of other ethnic minorities.
Importantly, since its formulation, Danish identity has not been linked to a particular racial or biological heritage, as many other ethno-national identities have. N. F. S. Grundtvig, for example, emphasized the Danish language and the emotional relation to and identification with the nation of Denmark as the defining criteria of Danishness. This cultural definition of ethnicity has been suggested to be one of the reasons that Denmark was able to integrate their earliest ethnic minorities of Jewish and Polish origins into the Danish ethnic group with much more success than neighboring Germany. Jewishness was not seen as being incompatible with a Danish ethnic identity, as long as the most important cultural practices and values were shared. This inclusive ethnicity has in turn been described as the background for the relative lack of virulent antisemitism in Denmark and the rescue of the Danish Jews, saving 99% of Denmark's Jewish population from the Holocaust.
Modern Danish cultural identity is rooted in the birth of the Danish national state during the 19th century. In this regard, Danish national identity was built on a basis of peasant culture and Lutheran theology, with Grundtvig and his popular movement playing a prominent part in the process. Two defining cultural criteria of being Danish were speaking the Danish language and identifying Denmark as a homeland.
The ideology of Danishness has been politically important in the formulation of Danish political relations with the EU, which has been met with considerable resistance in the Danish population, and in recent reactions in the Danish public to the increasing influence of immigration.
Diaspora
thumb|Danish consulate in [[Coruña, (Spain)]]
The Danish diaspora consists of emigrants and their descendants, especially those who maintain some of the customs of their Danish culture. A minority of approximately fifty thousand Danish-identifying German citizens live in the former Danish territory of Southern Schleswig (Sydslesvig), now located within the borders of Germany, forming around ten percent of the local population. In Denmark, the latter group is often referred to as "Danes south of the border" (), the "Danish-minded" (), or simply "South Schleswigers". Due to immigration there are considerable populations with Danish roots outside Denmark in countries such as the United States, Brazil, Canada, Greenland, Peru and Argentina.
Danish Americans () are Americans of Danish descent. There are approximately 1,500,000 Americans of Danish origin or descent. Most Danish-Americans live in the Western United States or the Midwestern United States. California has the largest population of people of Danish descent in the United States. Notable Danish communities in the United States are located in Solvang, California, and Racine, Wisconsin, but these populations are not considered to be Danes for official purposes by the Danish government, and heritage alone can not be used to claim Danish citizenship, as it can in some European nations.
According to the 2006 Census, there were 200,035 Canadians with Danish background, 17,650 of whom were born in Denmark. Canada became an important destination for the Danes during the post war period. At one point, a Canadian immigration office was to be set up in Copenhagen.
In Greenland, a self-governing territory under Danish sovereignty, there are approximately 6,348 Danish Greenlanders making up roughly 11% of the territory's population.
In South America, we find Danish clusters in countries such as Argentina, and Peru. In the case of Argentina, the main cities where Danes settled were called the "triangle": Tandil, Necochea, and Tres Arroyos. In Peru, although the migration was significantly smaller we do find a sizable amount of Danes and people of Danish descent in Lima. The Rasmussen family, with their founder Jorgen Rasmussen who moved to Peru in 1864. He is known for his contributions to the building of the electrical system in the country. In commemoration for his contributions, a plaque hangs in the administrative buildings of the country's electrical headquarters.
Genetics
The most common Y-DNA haplogroups among Danes are R1b (37.3 %) and I1 (32.8 %).
See also
- Demographics of Denmark
- List of Danes
- Culture of Denmark
- History of Denmark