Recent proposals make Danish stød the phonetic manifestation of a HL tonal pattern compressed within one syllable. This review of the relevant aspects of Danish stød and intonation demonstrates that (1) such a tonal representation of stød is contradicted by the phonetic reality. (2) Stød is distributed in words according to the same principles across regional varieties of Danish, but tonal patterns are highly variable. (3) Pitch accents are aligned with stressed syllables, whereas stød occurs also in less than fully stressed syllables, devoid of autonomous pitch movements. (4) A word may have only one pitch accent, but Danish words may have more than one stød.