"In Copenhagen there were 28 cars set on fire, 35 dumpsters and 14 garbage fires in the streets," Copenhagen police chief inspector Lau Thytesen told AFP.
Of the six people arrested in the capital, five were to be charged with arson while the sixth had been released, he said.
Other violence was reported in Denmark's second biggest city Aarhus, as well as Odense and North Zealand.
The cause of the troubles was not known. The youths, who have acted in small groups with no apparent organisation, have not spoken out about their motive.
One of the organisers of a peaceful anti-racism demonstration held in Copenhagen on Friday, Rasmus Lingnau Amossen, told daily Politiken that many youngsters felt harassed by police and believed the police were racist.
This is probably so. But this doesn't mean this isn't a problem. French Moslem youth have rioted over their economic status, too, without it being a Moslem revolt.
The problem is, once a group embarks on a path of violence over grievances, the violence creates new logic. Remember that when American colonists stood up to the British in 1775, it was as Englishmen asserting their rights as British citizens. A year later, we declared our independence and the fighting began in earnest with new goals far removed from the early tentative steps.
Rioting doesn't have to mean separatism. It doesn't seem to have happened in France, either. But it might in either country or elsewhere. I don't know what might trigger a transition in thinking.
