Danish Americans () are Americans who have ancestral roots in Denmark. There are approximately 1,300,000 Americans of Danish origin or descent.John Mark Nielsen, and Peter L. Petersen. "Danish Americans." in Gale Encyclopedia of Multicultural America, edited by Thomas Riggs, (3rd ed., vol. 2, Gale, 2014), pp. 1–14. online.
Most Danes who came to the United States after 1865 did so for economic reasons. The Danish population in Europe had grown significantly by 1865 due to advancements in medicine and food industries, leading to higher poverty rates and an increase in Danish migration to other countries. The sale of lands was another reason for migration, with many Danes becoming farmers in Wisconsin, Minnesota and the Dakotas. During the 1870s, almost half of all Danish immigrants settled in the US with their families, but by the 1890s, family immigration accounted for only 25% of the total. Many of these immigrants eventually returned to Denmark. Greater land inequality in certain areas of Denmark was linked to higher rates of emigration. In addition, missionaries belonging to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints converted many Danes who moved to Utah. Danish Americans assimilated into American society more quickly than other European groups and were the least united in preserving their cultural heritage.
History Danish immigration to the Americas began with Denmark's colonization with the arrival of the Danish West India Company to the Virgin Islands in the 1660s. A small number of Danes continued to migrate to the North American continent, where the Dutch colony of New Netherlands and the religious haven of Pennsylvania also housed early Danes. The onset of Danish mass migration to the United States began in the middle of the 19th century.
The first Dane known to have arrived in North America was The Reverend Rasmus Jensen, a priest of the Church of Denmark (Evangelical-Lutheran). He was the chaplain aboard an expedition to the New World commissioned by King Christian IV of Denmark in 1619. The expedition was made up of two small Danish ships Enhiørningen and Lamprenen, with 64 sailors who were Danes, Norwegians, Swedes, and Germans.
Captained by the navigator and explorer, Jens Munk, the ships were searching for the Northwest Passage. After sailing into Frobisher Bay and Ungava Bay, Munk eventually passed through Hudson Strait and reached Digges Island (at the northern tip of Quebec) on August 20. They then set out across the Bay towards the southwest. By early September, they had not yet found a passage. The party arrived in Hudson Bay on September 7, landed at the mouth of Churchill River, settling at what is now Churchill, Manitoba.
The two ships were put side-by-side and prepared for winter as best as they could. It was a disastrous winter. Cold, famine, and scurvy destroyed most of the men. Jensen had died on February 20, 1620. Only Munk and two sailors survived to return, leaving no settlement in the New World. The frigate Enhiørningen had been broken down by ice during the winter. However, the smaller Lamprenen could be salvaged. The return trip lasted two months. The surviving crew members aboard the Lamprenen reached Bergen, Norway on September 20, 1620.
The earliest documented Danish immigrants to the new world, Jan Jansen and his wife Engeltje, along with their children, arrived in the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam in 1636.
More than a century after Christian IV's expedition came explorer Vitus Jonassen Bering (1681–1741), a Dane who was working for the Russian empire. In 1728, he documented the narrow body of water that separated North America and Asia, which was later named the Bering Sea in his honor. Bering was the first European to arrive in Alaska in 1741. In 1666, the Danish West India Company took control of the island of St. Thomas in the Caribbean and eventually, the islands of St. John in 1717 and St. Croix in 1733. The Danes brought African slaves to those islands, where the slaves were put to work in the snuff, cotton and sugar industries. These early settlers began to establish trade with New England. In 1917, they sold the islands to the United States, and they were renamed US Virgin Islands.
In the early seventeenth century, individual Danish immigrants became established in North America. Scandinavians—Danes and Norwegians in particular—made up a large portion of the settlers in the Dutch colony of New Netherland, now New York. After 1750, Danish families in the Protestant Moravian Brethren denomination immigrated to Pennsylvania, where they settled in the Bethlehem area alongside German Moravians. Until 1850, most Danes who emigrated to North America were unmarried men. During this period, some Danes achieved notability and recognition. Among them were Hans Christian Febiger (1749–1796), one of George Washington's most trusted officers during the American Revolution, Charles Zanco (1808–1836) who died at the Alamo in March 1836 in the struggle for Texan independence, and Peter Lassen (1800–1859), a blacksmith from Copenhagen who led a group of adventurers from Missouri to California in 1839. The trail established by Lassen was followed by the "forty-niners" during the California Gold Rush. Lassen is considered one of the most important early settlers of California.
From 1820 and 1850, about 60 Danes settled in the United States every year. Between 1820 and 1990 there was a population of 375,000 to 450,000 Danes; a vast majority of whom emigrated between 1860 and 1930. The greatest Danish emigration occurred in 1882, when 11,618 Danes settled in the United States.
Danish immigrant communities have been linked to the emergence of the dairy industry in the United States. In the late 19th century, Denmark was a world leader in dairy production. A 2024 study found that American "counties with more Danes in 1880 subsequently both specialized in dairying and used more modern practices."
The first significant wave of Danish immigrants consisted mainly of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) members who settled in United States in 1847. They settled in Utah, before it became a state, which had been under Mexican control until 1848. There were 17,000 such immigrants, many of these settled in small farming communities in the Sanpete and Sevier counties. Today, these counties respectively have the second and fifth largest percentages of Danish Americans in the United States.
Between 1864 and 1920, 50,000 Danes emigrated from Schleswig, Jutland, where the use of Danish language was banned in schools following the Danish defeat in the Second Schleswig War and Prussia seizing control. They were called North Slesvigers, however, most of these Danes are recorded in the census statistics as immigrants from Germany rather than Denmark. Most Danes who immigrated to the United States after 1865 did so for economic reasons. By 1865, there had been a large increase in the Danish population in Europe because of the improvement in the medicine and food industries. It caused a high rate of poverty and ultimately resulted in a significant and rapid increase in Danish migration to other countries. Another reason for migration was the sale of lands. Many Danes became farmers in the United States. During the 1870s, almost half of all Danish immigrants to the United States settled in family groups. By the 1890s, family immigration made up only of 25 percent of the total. It has been suggested that many of these immigrants eventually returned to Denmark.
Areas of Denmark with greater land inequality had greater emigration.
Population According to the United States census of 2000, the states with the largest populations of Danish Americans are as follows:
California - 207,030 Utah – 144,713 Minnesota – 88,924 Wisconsin – 72,160 Washington – 72,098 Indiana – 30,000
Language According to the 2000 US Census, 33,400 people spoke Danish at home; that figure was down to 29,467 five years later (2005 American Community Survey), a decrease of about 11.8%.
Culture The Library of Congress has noted that Danish Americans, more so than other Scandinavian Americans, "spread nationwide and comparatively quickly disappeared into the melting pot... the Danes were the least cohesive group and the first to lose consciousness of their origins." Historians have pointed to the higher rate of English use among Danes, their willingness to marry non-Danes, and their eagerness to become naturalized citizens as factors that contributed to their rapid assimilation, as well as their interactions with the already more assimilated German American community.
Much that is regarded as "Danish" national culture today was not widespread in the psyche of Danish emigrants during the nineteenth century immigration to the United States. It would take the European nationalism and class struggles of the late nineteenth century to effectively seed the ideas of a distinctive national cultural personality. While many Danish emigrants to the U.S. fared far better economically than emigrants from Eastern Europe, a deep cultural awareness of Danish literature, with popular fiction authors such as Hans Christian Andersen, did not exist among the agrarian bønder or common people of Denmark. Exceptions exist, of course; primary among these are a rich heritage of folklore, an affinity to art, and regional traditions involving food and feast days.
As the Danes came to the U.S., they brought with them their traditional foods. Popular Danish cuisine includes kringle (almond paste pastry), Wienerbrød and fastelavnsboller or Danish pastry (commonly called a "Danish"), æbleskiver (puffed pan cakes), frikadeller (Danish veal and pork meatballs), flæskesteg (pork roast), and risengrød (rice pudding). Despite the importance of beer in modern Danish national culture, Danish immigrants were largely unsuccessful in penetrating the competitive American beer industry, which was saturated by immigrant German brew masters. Danish Christmas cookies called pebernødder are also popular among Danish Americans.
In 1872, Danish Americans in Omaha, Nebraska, founded Den Danske Pioneer, or Danish Pioneer, an English-Danish newspaper. Now published in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, it is the oldest Danish American newspaper in publication.
Snow College, located in Ephraim, Utah in Sanpete County, Utah, holds an annual Scandinavian Festival to honor their heritage and Danish as well as immigrants from other Scandinavian countries. The festival is held during two days in May. "And it expresses the warmth you’ll feel as you visit with us. You see, many of us are descendants of the plucky Scandinavians who crossed ocean and plain to settle our gorgeous valley. That proud past is part of our everyday lives. And we delight in sharing it with visitors." It features costumes, dancing, storytelling, entertainment, historical tours, craft and food booths.
Education Danish Americans also founded a few schools to promote traditionalism. Danish "folk schools," which focused more on learning outcomes than grades or diplomas, were operated primarily between the 1870s and 1930s in heavily Danish communities such as Racine, Wisconsin, Elk Horn, Iowa; Ashland, Michigan; West Denmark, Wisconsin; Nysted, Nebraska; Tyler, Minnesota; Viborg, South Dakota; Kenmare, North Dakota; and Solvang, California. Omaha, Nebraska and neighboring Council Bluffs, Iowa, had major colonies of Danes for many years.Thernstrom, S. (1980) Harvard encyclopedia of American ethnic groups. Harvard University Press. p 276.