Danish Americans

Economic Motivations

The vast majority of Danes left their country for economic reasons. In the earlier phases it was primarily the allure of affordable farmland, but toward the end of the 1800s, migration shifted to the cities. Yet from the very beginning there were also political and religious influences. In the late 1800s, German-ruled Schleswig experienced a substantial emigration of discontented Danish-speakers. At the same time, Mormon proselytization was uncommonly successful in Denmark, and the almost 17,000 Danes who left for Utah between 1850 and 1904 made Denmark the second-largest country of origin for Mormon immigrants.

Once they had arrived in their new country, Danish immigrants dispersed more evenly than their Scandinavian neighbors. With almost 18,000 Danish-born residents out of a national total of 182,000, Iowa contained the largest contingent of Danish immigrants in 1910, but Illinois, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Nebraska followed closely after, as did larger coastal states such as California and New York. Danes seldom reached the critical mass necessary to exercise decisive influence on entire states or at least larger regions. Only in individual settlements, most commonly located in western Iowa but spreading as far as California's Santa Ynez Valley, were Danish immigrants able to establish themselves as local majorities.

These settlement patterns furthered integration into American society. As early as 1910, 43 percent of second-generation Danish Americans had one non-Danish parent, among them primarily native-born Americans, Germans, and other Scandinavians. Today, only 6 percent of Danish Americans report having a spouse from the same ancestry group. In respect to language, the assimilation process progressed just as rapidly, with the number of Danish-speakers declining from a high of 187,000 in 1920 to 85,000 in 1960 and below 30,000 in 2005. The once far-spread Danish ecclesiastical infrastructure, primarily rooted in the Lutheran tradition, has largely merged into larger American entities. The over 100 secular ethnic associations have survived to a greater extent, with fraternal orders such as the Danish Brotherhood dating back to 1882 and newer organizations such as the Danish American Chamber of Commerce and the Danish American Heritage Association still being founded in the 1970s.

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