It was an extraordinary uprising.

In voting so decisively to reject the euro on Thursday, Danes ignored the advice of virtually the entire political and business establishment, not to mention the leading unions and media.

"It tells you the Danes don't like being pushed around by the authorities," said Joergen Birger Christensen, the chief economist at Danske Bank.

It also shows that Danes have a stronger attachment to their own country than to Europe and were more worried by their identity being smothered than they were the economic disadvantages of being outside the currency union.

"It's not Europe that's the problem, it's integration that's the problem," said Hans Joergen Nielsen, a political scientist at Copenhagen University.

Analysis of the voting shows that euroscepticism held sway in almost every corner of the country. Only the industrial heartlands of Jutland, a suburb of Odense and the affluent areas north of Copenhagen voted in favour of the euro. In years gone by, farmers and rural communities could be relied upon to rally to the European cause but that is not the case today.

Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, the passionately pro-euro prime minister, had given the campaign his all. Polls gave euro-supporters 60 per cent support when he called the referendum in March; by Thursday evening that had collapsed to 47 per cent.

Blunders by the Yes side - including the failure to tackle head-on the emotive issues of national identity and self-determination - as well as developments such as sanctions against Austria and the sharp weakening of the euro help explain why the single currency was rejected. But political life in Denmark looked to be continuing as normal yesterday. There were no resignations, no reshuffles and no visible shifts in the fragile alliances that provide Mr Nyrup Rasmussen's Social Democratic party with its parliamentary majority.

Holger K. Nielsen, the leader of the leftwing anti-euro Socialist People's Party, a party on which the minority coa lition government relies for support, made it clear that it was business as usual. "We are not going to pull the plug on this government," he said.

His party would rather collaborate with a Social Democrat-led government than the centre-right opposition.

But on European issues the government is going to find life harder. Having argued so strongly that a Yes to the euro was desirable because it provided influence, it will now be worried by the prospect of being marginalised and having less say in some of the key decisions affecting the country.

The first test will come at the Nice summit in December, where a comprehensive overhaul of European institutions will be up for discussion. Any suggestion of a transfer of powers from Denmark to Europe would be resisted by the Danes - not least because the Danish constitution requires a five-sixths parliamentary majority or a referendum to endorse any such transfer of sovereignty.

And after six Europe-related referendums in three decades, and a gruelling six-month campaign just finished, the last thing the government will want is a seventh popular vote so soon.

Referendum fatigue was evident on Friday in the words of Niels Helveg Petersen, the foreign minister.

"There's total agreement that the kinds of topics we are discussing at Nice, such as voting weights and majority decision-making, do not require a referendum," he stated.

Mr Petersen also ruled out any early referendum on Denmark's other opt-outs from the Maastricht treaty, most crucially the opt-out on defence that means Danes cannot take part in any European Union co-ordinated military action.

Others were less sure, saying it was quite possible that Nice, in particular, would throw up issues that required a new Danish referendum. And what about another on the euro? There was broad agreement on Friday on that option being absent from the political agenda for several years.

"One would first have to see the euro come into physical use in 2002 and see wheth er the project is a success. It will be at least three years from now," said Mr Christensen at Danske Bank.