Notes on Danish culture

As every teenage boy knows, freedom is defined not by the number of democratic principles enshrined in a country’s constitution, but by the amount of sex you can get when you go to that country.

Imagine, as a teenage boy, walking about in a wondrous citadel of fantasy and carnal desire, a plenitude of goddesses wafting through the streets, your every sexual whim potentiated by a mere glance. This is probably how Copenhagen, and Scandinavia in general, is viewed by the many sex tourists who come to Denmark each year.

Naked run for free tickets at the Roskilde Festival. Nakedness is not censored in Danish media.

Danes are commonly seen as “very relaxed about sex”. But that phrase is perhaps a bit loose, prompting the mind to wildly gallop off in all directions. What does it mean? Can I go up to any girl in the street and ask her to sleep with me? Yes, you can. Will she comply? No, not very likely. Almost certainly not at all.

What are your intentions, son?
It might come as a shock to the teenage boys of the world, but Danish girls are not any more promiscuous than girls anywhere else. The culture is certainly more educated about sexuality than, say, Somalia – or even the United States. Sexuality in Denmark is approached rationally, to use a precise word. When girls and boys start to show interest in each other during adolescence, instead of suppressing this interest, as is the norm in most countries, it is encouraged.

The age of consent in Denmark is 15, and most parents see nothing wrong with having their children have sex in the safety of their bedrooms. In fact, parents are very open and supportive of their children’s sexual development, and the nay-saying and fearful attitudes that seem to plague traditional cultures are refreshingly absent in Danish homes. The stereotypical apprehensive punk boyfriend making timid conversation with a brutish, baseball bat-wielding father is stuff of grotesque American sitcoms. My own expectations when I met my future father-in-law were summarily undercut by the surreal normality of the situation.

Toward a phenomenological approach to Viking underwear in contemporary visual arts
Danes have been open about sex and sexuality since they took the lead in the sexual revolution during the late post-war years. They were the first country to legalize pornography (in ’69), and the global cultural repercussions of this new kind of openness is why Denmark’s reputation as a sexually tolerant country persists until today.

During the 60s and 70s the pornography scene in Denmark was quite mainstream. One Easter a few years ago, one TV channel (TV2 Zulu) had a weekend-long porn special, during which it showed nothing but back-to-back, home-grown Danish porn. For the sake of very important scientific and sociological research I was doing at the time, I decided to spend my Easter weekend in front of the TV. Many of the movies were from the 60s and 70s, and instead of obscure porn stars with colourful names and fake body parts, these movies featured respected, household-name Danish actors of the time.

Here’s surreptitiously looking at you, kid
Danes have a natural way of approaching their sexuality, which should make it easy as pie for my teenage-boy self to position himself strategically and reel in as many hot babes as he likes. It would be the ideal, were it not for the fact that Danes can be a bit complex.

How do you know whether a Dane is sexually interested in you? The short answer (with few exceptions): you don’t. Flirting is not a phenomenon that has really caught on in the northern hemispheres quite yet, and if it had, it certainly has a way to go to develop into the art that it should be. I mention in earlier posts that Danes are extremely private and pragmatic people. First, flirting is intrusive. Looking at someone suggestively is just udansk (un-Danish). You’re violating their personal space. Second, flirting is not practical. Why flirt with a good-looking person on the bus just for the fun of it? It’s not going to have a tangible outcome, so why waste your time?

Scene from TV show "Live fra Bremen". Acting coach Ivana Chubbuck came up next. Her first words were, "That is not something you'll see on American TV"

So what does the Danish mating ritual look like? From what I’ve heard it is quite direct, akin to the time-tested method of thumping a potential candidate on the head with a big stick: you get very drunk, go out to a dancing place or something similar, and when you wake up from your stupor to examine your catch, you decide whether to keep it or not. It saves you a lot of time and possible social embarrassment, you get to be half unconscious while you do it, and it has a surprise factor, which is a nice bonus.

Turn off the Enlightenment, baby
But with all this talk about the Danes’ demystification of sex, how has it affected the actual enjoyment of sex? Is sex not supposed to be shrouded in mystery and suspense and have a sense of novelty? Isn’t this what gives mental impetus to an otherwise purely physical activity? Is imagination not the most powerful aphrodisiac?

It is certainly true that unfettered imagination combined with abject ignorance has proven to be a prime ingredient in a disastrous sexual history, from the nonsensical prudishness of Victorian sensibility to the genital mutilation that seems to be prevalent in many tribal cultures. But to what extent have the Danes, through putting the whole subject under the glaring and unsexy lights of reason, managed to cull sexual imagination, if at all?

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Tags: flirting, sex

This entry was posted on Friday, April 30th, 2010 at 23:49 and is filed under Culture & norms. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.