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INTERNATIONALS

Where do Americans live in Denmark… and how many have become Danish?

There are 9,338 Americans living in Denmark, according to data provided to The Local by Statistics Denmark. Here’s a look at where they have settled as well as their occupations, and how many have become Danish citizens.

Published: 2 April 2019 15:45 CEST
Where do Americans live in Denmark... and how many have become Danish?
File photo: Anne Bæk/Ritzau Scanpix

There are 8,998 Americans currently living in Denmark's 99 different municipalities.

Of those, 3,569 live in Copenhagen, with the next-most populous municipality for Americans being Aarhus, with 639. That means over five times more American residents live in Copenhagen than in any other municipality — similar to figures for British citizens living in Denmark.

READ ALSO: Map: Where do Denmark-based Brits live, and how many have become Danish citizens?

Frederiksberg is next with 495, then Gentofte with 358. Both Frederiksberg and Gentofte are a part of the greater Copenhagen area.

The other municipalities with over 100 American residents are: Odense with 213, Aalborg with 159, followed very closely by Lyngby-Taarbæk with 158, Rudersdal (154), Gladsaxe (128), Vejle (124), and Roskilde (101).

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The island of Læsø is the municipality with the fewest number of both British and American citizens, with only one American, and three Britons.

The number of American citizens living in Denmark has increased from 6,494 in 2008 to 9,351 in 2018. There were 9,351 Americans living in Denmark 1st January 2018, and of these 1,091 of these had Danish citizenship, according to Statistics Denmark figures.

American immigration to Denmark and visits by American tourists to Denmark have both increased over the last 10 years, according to the national stats agency.

 

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Employment of Americans living in Denmark

Americans living in Denmark have 36 different occupations, according to Statistics Denmark's classifications. The most common sectors are education, wholesale and retail trade, consultancy, IT and information service activities, residential care, arts, entertainment and recreation activities, accommodation and food services, travel agents, cleaning and other operational services, healthcare, advertising and other business services.

Americans who have become Danish citizens

“There are 9,338 Americans in Denmark, but the number of American citizens is 8,998,” journalist Theis Stenholt Engmann of Statistics Denmark told The Local.

“There are also 729 descendants of American immigrants in Denmark, 406 of these have American citizenship.” Engmann added.

A graph showing Danish citizenships awarded to Americans over time reveals an interesting trend which mirrors that highlighted in our article on the numbers of Britons who have moved to Denmark.

In 2008, 25 Americans became Danish citizens. The following year, the number dropped to 19, and remained at a low level until reaching 27 new citizenships 2015.

In 2016, the number of Americans granted Danish citizenship increased to 110, before more than doubling to 248 in 2017. Last year, 114 US nationals became Danish citizens.

 

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That is almost certainly linked to Denmark's introduction in 2015 of a law allowing dual citizenship. Many who may have long-since fulfilled requirements to become nationalised in Denmark, but did not want to give up their US passport, may have waited until 2015 to begin applying.

READ ALSO: Why provincial Denmark is a great place to be for an international family

Member comments

  1. Retired USMC, Marine Guard with our Embassy 1950’s.
    My wife, Bente, and I married 63 years ago. Are there other Marines that married while stationed Copenhagen? After military retirement Bente and I moved to Copenhagen for more than 10 years. Would like to contact others who may have done the same.

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EXPATS

Meet the group building bridges between Danes and foreign residents

Moving to Denmark as an expat often turns out to be more difficult than you would expect. Snigdha Bansal, a student at Aarhus University's Mundus Journalism program, writes about the Facebook group trying to build bridges with Danes.

Published: 2 July 2020 12:18 CEST
Meet the group building bridges between Danes and foreign residents
The group has six active admins, from both Denmark and elsewhere. Photo: Tine H. Jorgensen
Moving to Denmark as an expat, one looks forward to embracing Danish culture and getting integrated into one of the world’s happiest societies. However, it often turns out to be more difficult than you would expect. 
 
Established in 2019, ‘Beyond Stereotypes: Danes & Internationals’ seeks to facilitate interactions between expats and locals in Denmark
 
‘Difficult to integrate with the Danes’
 
Poulomi Deb Bose, 33, moved to Denmark from India with her husband in June 2019. She says Danes have been very helpful in everyday interactions – at supermarkets, or at bus stops, helping her find her way in English. However, it has been integrating with them that has proved difficult.
 
“My interaction with Danes is limited to my landlord or people at the local kommune. It’s even difficult to spot them around, unless at the gym, where it never goes beyond a smile. It is a lot easier to talk to other internationals”, she says.
 
A couple months ago, a friend told her about a Facebook group with not just internationals but also Danes. Up until then, she had only been part of the groups with Internationals and this was the first of its kind where both communities were encouraged to interact with each other.
 
 
‘Building bridges’
 
Beyond Stereotypes: Danes & Internationals is a Facebook group with over 2,400 members.
 
The group was formed by Tine H. Jorgensen, a 56-year old academic and practitioner. While it acts as a meeting point for expats in Denmark and Danes, members are also invited to share their own unique experiences of interactions within the community to inspire and help others.
 
The idea of the group was sparked in early 2019 by a conversation Jorgensen had after a radio show in Aarhus where she was performing clairvoyance on air. The host of the show, Houda Naji from Morocco, and Enas Elgarhy, another invitee from Egypt, told her of their experiences of getting married to Danes and settling in Denmark.
 
“They talked about how difficult it was to make Danish friends, how long it took to get a CPR number which was needed for basic things like going to the gym, and other issues that made me realise how ridiculous it was for internationals. I asked myself what I could do about this.”
 
She decided the least she could do was to start a Facebook group, and invited both Naji and Elgarhy to join her as admins.
 
As the group has grown, its “bridge-building” role has become clearer, says Jorgensen, as more International and Danish admins come on board. 
 
 
The group organises monthly meet-ups for members to interact. Photo: Tine H. Jorgensen
 
‘Challenging our own biases’
 
Marta Gabriela Rodriguez-Karpowicz is a 38-year old life coach from Poland who recently started her own practice after working at the Danish corporation Vestas for almost 10 years.
 
She recently became a Danish citizen after 12 years of living in the country and is also an admin of the group. She took on the role because she believed that it would be “a worthwhile effort to build bridges between Danes and Internationals, which doesn’t appear to be happening naturally.” She wanted to be a part of this initiative owing to her own struggles to integrate and her experience of having grown past that phase, using which she could help others. 
 
“I also wanted to identify which biases I still had myself, so I could challenge them and grow beyond stereotypes”, she says.
 
‘Overcoming challenges’
 
The group connects people across Denmark by organising hobby-based meet-ups, providing a platform to discuss travel stories around Denmark as well as social issues such as racism. Job postings and job-seeking posts are also welcome, which some would say is the biggest challenge. 
 
Both Bose and Rodriguez-Karpowicz accompanied their husbands who found jobs in Denmark, and did not expect the difficulties they would face while finding jobs for themselves.
 
Bose associates it with the trust factor that is deeply ingrained in Danes. “I have realised they can be quite rigid in trusting outsiders for jobs or with references”, she says. 
 
This is also an area Rodriguez-Karpowicz believes she can help members with, since she found it difficult to get a job despite being “highly educated and experienced”, but eventually managed.
 
Integration in a new country can be difficult, but expats shouldn’t give up, according to Jorgensen. 
 
She acknowledges that racism does exist in Denmark, but at the same time, there are a lot of Danes who are very welcoming, and that’s the Danish attitude she wanted to highlight.
 
“I wanted to do my little bit to bring that forward, and connect people in a practical way.” 
 
  
 
  
 

 
 
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