Well, Sun Lion and Teia.
It gets even more coplicated that this. The fierce feeling of belonging to a tribe is actually fairly recent.
Until 1848 Denmark was a mulitinational and mulitilingual realm.
I'd say the majority of present day Danes are not aware of this. The contemporary feeling is that we have always been Danes here in Denmark. And indeed we have, but we only constituted about three-fifths of the population of the realm that was Denmark.
In order to understand this there are three years you need to look at.
1658
1788
and 1848.
If you were somehow transported back to Copenhagen anno 1655, you would hear various dialects of Danish, which you would be forgiven for thinking were different languages! You would also hear a lot of German as one fifth of the entire population were from the duchies of Schleswig & Holstein (German spelling). You would hear Norwegian being spoken. Quite a few of our most distinguished Danish national heroes were Norwegian.
You would occasionally also hear Faeroese and Icelanders speaking "old Norse" and you would at that time hear Dutch. Dutch settlers were invited to Denmark to basically modernize the country and some of these families became very distinct. Like Meulengracht (a present day family, one of whom is a friend of M&F).
All these people would look puzzled at you if you told them they were Danes. They would certainly declare their allegiance to the Danish king and feel a strong connection to the realm called Denmark and many if not most probably had Danish relatives or were married to a Dane but they didn't consider themelves Danish.
Denmark was the realm
not an ethnic people.
The ethnic Danes themselves would of course see themselves as Danes, but they might very well be married to say a German and have close friends who were from Norway.
Then in 1658 disaster struck. Denmark lost one of a countless wars to Sweden, and we lost the ancient Danish provinces of what is now southern Sweden. Lands that had always been ethnic Danish, and it's likely that the Danes originated from here.
It's difficult today to comprehend how traumatic that was. It was as if France invaded England and all the shires south of London were lost.
That conquest was followed by two more wars and a genuinely brutal ethnic cleansing and passification of the lost provinces in the following decades. Refugees streamed across to Zealand and Copenhagen in particular.
These refugees were ethnic Danes and the bitterness and indeed rage started in earnest the sense of nationalism that is a part of Danish national character today.
1788. For a few centuries the majority of Danis peasants had been "livegne" a kind of serfs. In order to prevent the most enterprising young men and young families from seeking their fortune elsewhere and thereby draining the agricultural workforce, a law was passed down ensuring that peasants were not allowed to leave the local area. They adhered to a specific noble estate for life. - It wasn't slavery, there was a good deal of social security involved in this as well, but that's another story.
In 1788 that was hopelesly oldfashioned and not in line with the humanist views that grew around that time. So Struensee (you know, from the recent movie) in one of his countless reforms abolished that.
That was pretty traumatic as well!
The majority of the population were peasants who lived in hamlets consisting of three, four or five farms with extended families with fields around. They would perhaps go to a market in the nearest town a couple of times a month, they would go to metropols like Copenhagen or Hamburg most likely once in their lives, if at all.
They were used to living among people they knew, who dressed like themselves, looked like themselves and behaved like themselves and not least spoke the same dialect. That felt safe, that felt right.
You could litterally by looking at how a person dressed and by listening to someone's dialect say exactly where that person came from, almost down to the individual parish. - That's why we have so many dialects here in DK and countless words for relatives.
That's also the source of the feeling of people should preferably speak and act like the rest of us.
After 1788 the individual pesants had to fend for themselves and the countryside changed from countless clusters of tiny villages to farms scattered all over the place, but the village mentality lingered on to this day.
1848. Denmark was to become a democracy by 1849. Absolutism was to be abolished and a new Constitution was being written. By then, (1814, DK was Napoleon's last ally) Denmark had "lost" Norway. (The Norweigians didn't become independant, they basically became a large Swedish province instead, but that's another story).
Denmark or rather the Danish realm now consisted of Iceland and the Faeroe Islands, Holsten, Slesvig (DK spelling) and of course Denmark itself.
To have different administrations and different legislation for all these areas of the realm was considered impractical and unecessary, why don't we create one legislation for the entire realm? And while we are at it, why not make Danish the official language? No way! They shouted down in Holstein & Schleswig, we are
not Danish and we have never been Danish, we want this to remain a kind of union.
At the same time a nationalistic wave went through Europe and not least in Germany where there was a growing sense of belonging "wir sind ja doch alle Germanen" and Holstein and Schleswig were attracted, because that was were the action and opportunities was.
Well, tempers flared and that led to the First Schleswigan War. The Holstein and Schleswigan rebels lost and all what they had fought against was implemented.
That naturally led to the Second Schleswigan War in 1864, Denmark lost, and a third of the country was lost (they basically ended up as Preussian protectorates but that's also another story). A third of the country!
It was deeply traumatic! People had intermarried for centuries and now family members and friends had fought against each other in two wars.
That defeat infuenced the national character up until recently. It also meant that we became more introverted and much more nationalistic. We closed ranks and celebrated what was Danish, the language, the culture, the heritage and conviniently overlooked the fact that so many Danish icons were really German or Norwegian. That's where the present day feeling of what it is to be "Danish" was born.
That feeling is very much shown in our flag, Dannebrog. Until the start of the war in 1848 Dannebrog was only used by ships as identification and by the King's men, i.e. army and navy. But ordinary people began to wave Dannebrog, and even more enthusiastic than today (!) and that has now become one of our strongest national symbols.
- A long story, I know, but essential to really comprehend the Danish national character.
A question to the Danes here, how was queen Ingrid's Danish accent? I would guess that it was easier for her to learn the Danish vocabulary than for the newer members of the DRF, as Swedish and Danish are closely related, but how about her accent and grammar?
Perhaps others are better at answering that question as I only remember hearing Queen Ingrid speaking when she was old and her Danish was in my opinion flawless.
However, I remember what older relatives have told me about her. When she was a crown princess in the 1930's, Ingrid was not particularly popular.
She was a Swede, and if that wasn't bad enough, she appears to have had problems getting rid of her Swedish accent fast enough.
Then she was a little too correct and a little too formal. She was basically seen as somewhat arrogant. - Fitting in perfectly with all the stereotypes about the Swedes.
She also dressed a little too fancy and she wasn't seen as nearly as "folksy" as her husband and the rest of the DRF. - Interesting as King Christian X was anything but "folksy". He was in every way an army officer of the old school! Though he had a soft spot for Ingrid. (Does all the above ring a bell?)
![Wink ;) ;)](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)
My mother, who died many years ago, firmly believed the story about Queen Ingrid being a cleptomaniac. Even though she had a deep respect for Queen Ingrid for not least being the undisputed matriach of the DRF - and for dressing down Prince Henrik from time to time....
![Stick out tongue :p :p](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)
Whether the cleptomaniac story was true, a misunderstanding or simply a nasty rumour I don't know. Frederik was devoted to Queen Ingrid but I'm in no doubt that he was also a handful! I read a theory way back that marriage-problems can manifest themselves as cleptomania. I don't know. The rumour was apparantly widely believed.
Then WWII came and the DRF became a rallying point and that also changed the look on Ingrid and I think she was very much seen, perhaps not least by housewives back in the 50's and 60's, as the "rock of the family" and they could perhaps relate to her. So I believe she was in that strange way very much accepted by the women of the "tribe".
Queen Ingrid, ended up being the very definition of how a Queen should be in the minds of the Danes. Apparantly also to a very large degree by those who opposed the monarchy.