ABSTRACT
During the second half of the nineteenth century, a number of Danish travel writers journeyed to the United States with a view to reporting about the New World to the reading public back home. Among the themes they commonly discussed was how Danish and other Scandinavian immigrants were faring in their new surroundings, both in the countryside and in the cities. Comparing them with other groups, the writers placed them atop an implicitly constructed ethnoracial hierarchy, far above groups such as the African Americans and Chinese Americans and also above the Irish Americans and Italian Americans, if only barely above the German Americans. The yardstick for evaluating them was the native-born, English-speaking population of white “Americans.” Even though the travel writers differed on the question of the desirability of assimilation to American standards, with pluralist ideals being aired alongside assimilationist ones, they nevertheless found common ground between the Danes and other Scandinavians on the one hand and the “Americans” on the other, based on a supposed mutual northern European heritage characterized by a strong work ethic, a natural attachment to the soil, and an affinity for freedom, ultimately adding up to a shared sense of whiteness.
