The independent tenure of the land by a vast number of small farmers, who are their own masters, gives an air of carelessness, almost of truculence, to the well-to-do Danish peasants.
The mixed population, as a whole, displays the usual characteristics of mountaineers, fine physique and vigorous independent spirit; but its ancient truculence has given way before strong government action since the middle 10th century, and the great increase of agricultural pursuits, to which the purely pastoral are now quite secondary.