Danishness
Danishness (danskhed) is the concept on which contemporary Danish national and ethnic identity is based. It is a set of values formed through the historic trajectory of the formation of the Danish nation. The ideology of Danishness emphasises the notion of historical connection between the population and the territory of Denmark and the relation between the 1000-year old Danish monarchy and the modern Danish state, the 19th century national romantic idea of "the people" (folk), a view of Danish society as homogeneous and socially egalitarian as well as strong cultural ties to other Scandinavian nations.
Importantly, since its formulation Danish identity has not been linked to a particular racial or biological heritage, as many other ethno-national identities have. Grundtvig for example emphasised 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. Jewishness for example was not seen as being incompatible with a Danish ethnic identity as long as the most important cultural practices and ideologies were shared. This inclusive ethnicity has in turn been described as the background for the relative lack of virulent anti-semitism in Denmark and the rescue of the Danish Jews
This 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.
Read more about this topic: Danes