Denmark Country Overview
Where is Denmark located? Denmark is a kingdom found in northern Europe. About a third of its total area consists of over 400 islands. Being part of Europe, it is not surprising that Denmark is also in the same time zone as Germany on the time zone map, which divides the countries into world time zones along the lines of longitude. This is called “Central European Time” (CET) and is 1 hour ahead of world time. (UTC +1). In summer there is a time difference of one hour in Denmark, which means that the time in summer is called “Central European Summer Time”. Then the time difference to the world clock is 2 hours.
Population Distribution
As of 2023, the latest population of Denmark is 5,869,410, based on our calculation of the current data from UN (United Nations).
Total population | 5,869,410 |
Population growth rate | 0.48% |
Birth rate | 10.50 births per 1,000 people |
Life expectancy | |
Overall | 78.94 years |
Men | 76.54 years |
Women | 81.47 years |
Age structure | |
0-14 years | 16.57% |
15-64 years | 64.03% |
65 years and above | 19.42% |
Median age | 41.80 years |
Gender ratio (Male to Female) | 0.97 |
Population density | 136.20 residents per km² |
Urbanization | 85.30% |
Ethnicities | |
Danes (Scandinavians, Faroe Islands, Inuit); Proportion of foreigners 2015: 7.5% | |
Religions | |
Lutherans 95%, Other Protestants and Catholics (Roman Catholic) 3%, Muslims 2% | |
Human Development Index (HDI) | 0.930 |
HDI ranking | 11th out of 194 |
People in Denmark
The Danes
90 percent of Denmark’s residents are Danish. The remaining 10 percent include people from other Scandinavian countries (for example Sweden) and the “German minority”, who mainly live in the border area with Germany.
75 percent of the population belong to the Evangelical Lutheran Danish People’s Church and are therefore Protestants. There are few Catholics (0.6 percent) and Muslims (3 percent). Most of the Danes, namely 88 percent, live in the city.
Languages in Denmark
Danish is spoken in Denmark. Danish belongs to the Indo-European languages and here again to the North Germanic (Nordic or Scandinavian) languages. Danish, Swedish and Norwegian are so similar that a Dane can understand a Norwegian without much problem – practical, right?
There are several dialects of Danish. So one speaks differently in Jutland (namely Jutisch) than on the islands, for example on Zealand and Funen (island Danish). Bornholm, the easternmost island in Denmark, also has a dialect: Bornholmisch or East Danish.
In Danish there are no umlauts (ie ä, ö, ü) and no “ß”. However, our “ä” corresponds to Æ in Danish (lower case: æ). Our “ö” corresponds to the slashed o: Ø (lowercase letter: ø). Then there is the “A” with a curl on top: Å (lower case: å). It replaced the double “aa” in a spelling reform in 1948. It is pronounced more like an “o”. The little ring stands for the “o”. Since 1948, nouns have also been written in Danish in lower case (as in English).