Fun facts about the new Danish passport

First of all, some of the graphics. As with the previous series, the Danish passport design includes the Jelling Stones as a recognition motif. These two runic stones at Jelling Church date back to the 10th century and are associated with the founding of Denmark as a nation-state.

Each page in the passport has a different layout, with a background that incorporates the outlines of well-known Danish islands, which can be seen as if at night. When UV light is shone onto the page, the islands glow and they appear as they would if you were flying over them at night and looking at the lights of the Danish cities.

Other motifs on the pages appear to move – for example a Viking dragon figure appears to be moving, depending on the angle it is viewed at. This is created using innovative MAGIC-ID multi-image technology in the new passport design.

Denmark has eight different passport types: a standard Danish passport; special passports for citizens of Greenland and the Faroe Islands; a diplomatic passport; a service passport; an alien passport; a travel document for refugees; and a paper-based emergency passport, which could be issued by an overseas embassy.

The new ePassports are manufactured by a consortium of two companies. Veridos, a world-leading provider of identity solutions, is responsible for the design and production of the passports and some of the high-end security features. The Danish ID specialist idpeople is responsible for personalization and distribution of the passports, at its site in Skovlunde near Copenhagen, plus customer service alongside the Danish authorities.

The new Danish passports are produced in accordance with the highest security standards of the EU and the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and meet all the requirements for being highly secure and forgery-proof.

The booklet has 32 pages, including a polycarbonate data page, which contains an electronic chip that can be scanned at immigration. The passport contains a total of four photographs of the holder. These include a standard portrait, a photo in a semi-transparent window, a color photo located opposite the data page, and a fourth photo that is linked to a Veridos security feature called Fuse-ID.

Even with all of these innovative new features, the new Danish ePassports can be supplied quickly, each one taking between just three and ten working days to issue in Denmark, depending on demand. So far, nobody so far has missed their trip because of not having a passport back on time.