Notes on Danish culture

I’ve recently had to study a lot of stuff about Denmark for a test I had to do. So I decided to put some of it here, in point form. Here’s a bit of Denmark’s history.

• Denmark is a small country today (over 220 times smaller than the USA), but during the Viking era (ca. 750 to 1035) it was the center of a bigger kingdom that included today’s Sweden and Norway.
• The word “Denmark” comes from “daner”, which was the name of the people, and “mark” which means border area or field. So it literally means “field of the Danes”. The name dates back to the end of 800, when the Danish area bordered that of the Saxons of northern Germany.


Danish negotiations

• The Danish writing system in those days was based on runes (which back then meant “secrets”). The use of runes later spread to Sweden and Norway.
• Viking ships were exceedingly seaworthy, so they could cover great distances. This allowed the Danes to have contact with merchants from Russia and Arabic countries.
• Knud the Great (King Canute) conquered and ruled England from 1016 to 1035. He also ruled Denmark and Norway during approximately this time. This was the high point of Danish rule. From here everything went downhill.

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• Denmark went through a series of events during which it had a well-defined class system, became protestant and lost a lot of wars and land area, mostly to Sweden. During one of these wars (1658) Sweden wins, but then, later that same year, the Swedish king thinks, “Wait a minute, why not conquer the whole of Denmark?”
  Sweden attacks again, but Copenhagen pulls through by the skin of its teeth.
• During this time the Danish economy is in tatters. The Danes decide to abolish the nobility, who until then had been running the whole show (the nobility elected the new kings). It is decided that the kingdom should be inherited (go from father to son), and the official Danish royalty is born. The king was now autocratic, which means that he could call the shots.
• King Frederik the 3rd establishes a foundation for the current Danish model, including a royal constitution and rule of law (1660). Things begin to look good for a while.
• During the Napoleonic Wars England attacks Denmark (which at this point was neutral). Denmark sides with France, but it is an expensive war. In 1813 Denmark goes bankrupt.
• The French revolution had given everyone in Europe a lot of crazy ideas about individual freedom. The Danes decide that they want a free constitution. King Frederik the 7th agrees, and the first democratic constitution is signed on 5 June 1849.

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• England was the world leader in industrialization with the invention of the steam engine. Denmark and many other European countries only began to catch on about 100 years later. It was only after WW2 that Denmark went from being an agrarian society to an industrial one.
• A workers’ movement, the social democrats, begins to emerge in the 1870s, and becomes an independent party in 1878.
• A historic agreement is made between workers and employers in September 1899, in which they acknowledge each other’s rights.
• Other political parties are Venstre (literally: left), who represent farmers (today they are conservative and represent business) and Højre (literally: right) who represent the conservatives (today they are called the Conservative Folk Party).

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• During WW1 Denmark is neutral, but Germany forces Denmark to lay mines in the Baltic Sea in order to prevent ships attacking from there.
• The USA worries that Germany will build military bases on Danish-owned islands St. John, St. Croix and St. Thomas in the Caribbean. So it buys the islands from Denmark in 1917 for $25 million.
• The constitution is amended in 1915, and women get the vote.
• The constitution is amended again in 1920. The king loses all political power.
• During WW2 Denmark is neutral again, but Germany doesn’t respect it. Germany invades on 9 April 1940 and occupies Denmark for the duration of the war.
• An underground resistance movement is formed. Of the 8000 Jews living in Denmark, 7000 of them are successfully moved to Sweden.
• Denmark comes through WW2 mostly unscathed. After the war the old political parties are soon back in business.
• At the end of the 50s Denmark becomes an industrial powerhouse, and the economy sky-rockets.
• In 1953 there is no male heir to the Danish throne, and the constitution is changed to allow women to inherit the throne (though only if there is no male in the family to do the job). This is the 4th and last time the constitution is changed. Margrethe the 2nd becomes queen and regent in 1972. When the constitution is amended in the future, it will most likely allow for eldest daughters to succeed to the throne, irrespective of male siblings.
• The welfare system begins to take shape.
• In the 70s there is a short supply of manual labour. Many workers are invited from Turkey, Pakistan and Yugoslavia.
• Many things happen in 1973. Denmark joins the EU. The economy is experiencing a downturn because of high oil prices. Foreign workers are not needed any more, and immigration is stopped. Until this point there were only 4 parties in parliament. During a historic election, two more parties join the government. One is the Progress Party (they don’t like income tax, the EU, foreigners and the bureaucracy of the welfare state) and the Christian Folk Party (they don’t like the new abortion law).

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• Denmark doesn’t have many natural resources besides oil and gas. Today it has moved from being an industrial society to a service-based and knowledge society (excelling especially in alternative energy and medicine).


30% of Danes cycle to work (ca. 1% in the US)

• Education in Denmark takes much longer than in other countries, so Danes are a bit older when they begin to work. There is also a tendency to retire younger, which is beginning to challenge the welfare model.
• In spite of a bit of a rough history, Denmark is today one of the richest countries in the world, and one of the few countries that meets the UN’s target of giving 0,7% of its gross national product to third-world development.

This just landed in my inbox: “The Danish Chamber of Commerce and Expat in Denmark are pleased to present a new booklet on work and life in Denmark, from an Expat perspective.”

(Try the second link if the PDF link doesn’t work)

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?

Related news article

This was one of the first Danish words I learned before coming to Denmark. The person who taught me the word looked at me very earnestly and said “Mark, in Denmark we have this thing called ‘hygge’”. In the most reverend of tones he laid out the concept for me, and like a sorcerer’s apprentice at his master’s feet my mind’s eye swelled with a myriad shimmering impressionist dreams of harmony and contentment in faraway lands.

A "hyggelig" evening

Hygge is a state of comfort, peace and warmth while in the company of loved ones. It represents a great deal of how Danes relate to each other. An agreeable person who exudes good vibes can be described as “hyggelig” (hygge-like). A place can be hyggelig. After a night out with friends, upon meeting again, one would say “Tak for sidst. Det var hyggeligt” (Thanks for the last time. It was hyggeligt). And in the imperative, if you want to wish someone a pleasant time, you can simply say “Hyg dig” (Hyg yourself).

Hygge seems to be more of a nighttime phenomenon. A teenage party in the civic hall, with soft drinks, a spotty DJ playing Aqua and Gypsy Kings, and a battery of white neon tubes glaring down from the ceiling is not hyggeligt. The preferred mode of illumination for creating hygge is the candle. A hyggelig dinner is accompanied by slightly dimmed lightbulbs and two or three candles. If, like me, you develop the idea that the number of candles is directly proportional to the amount of hygge created, you will be sorely mistaken. One night we had guests over, and in my enthusiasm I lit so many candles that my wife had to tell me to tone it down, since we were “not hosting a satanist ritual slaughter”.

In fact, had it been a satanist event, it would have been described as “uhyggeligt” (un-hyggelig). Uhyggelig is not quite the opposite of hyggelig, as with the teenage party; it roughly translates as “creepy”.

However, hygge, as a phenomenon to understand, is as elusive as it is subtle. I am quite sure that if no one had told me about hygge beforehand, I would never have noticed it. I don’t think it is as unique a phenomenon as the Danes make themselves believe it to be. In fact, I think that hygge, as it exists in Denmark, is borne out of the cluelessness that most Danes seem to have where hospitality is concerned. I mentioned earlier how awkward Danes get when you show up at their door unannounced, expecting a cup of tea and a quick chat. The only possible way to see your Danish friends is to plan an event weeks in advance, and in my view this time functions as a kind of hygge gestation period. The hygge needs time to warm up and mature, to get used to the idea of its own existence. Far from being the default Danish state of mind, hygge is rather the antithesis of aloofness and reserve, which much more accurately typifies the Danish character.

Hygge, as a word, also exists in Norway. Actually, it originates there. As a concept, I’m sure it exists in all countries where the long and persistent gloom of winter forces the human imagination to come up with any alternative to the slow descent into inevitable melancholia.

But the Danes have chosen to own the idea, to make an active study of it and turn it into an obsession. Many academic papers have been written on the subject, it is often the subject of lively social debate, and most Danes’ eyes seem to brighten at the mere mention of the word. If you run out of things to say at a party, ask a Dane to explain hygge to you. Not only will you learn a few things; you will also earn a few extra points for showing such interest in their most quintessential social commodity.

In Korea everyone asked me whether my country also had four distinct seasons, as they seemed to believe that their country was unique in this respect. The Chileans were always going on about how imaginative and funny their slang was, and could talk about it all day. South Africans like to ruminate endlessly about their own brand of hospitality and understanding of cultural diversity — again, as if they are the world masters in these matters. For the Danes, all the world needs is a couple of candles (not too many) and a good dose of lukewarm, two-week-old, ready-to-consume Danish hygge.

My wife has a Japanese friend who studied Danish at the University of Tokyo, and then came to Denmark to study the Danish education system. Most Danes don’t see any point in anyone taking such an abstract interest in their language. It would be understandable if she came here on holiday and then got hooked on the rye bread, liver paté and fluorescent sausages. Then she’d have to stay and learn the language, like the rest of us.

Textbook cases

She’s been travelling back and forth between Denmark and Japan for many years. While she was learning, and as her Danish improved, she became increasingly aware of how badly her Japanese lecturers spoke Danish.

The Danish experience in Tokyo

And this is not surprising, because they themselves learned Danish from textbooks. If you’ve already started to learn Danish, you might know what a challenge this is. When I arrived in Denmark, I tried to study every day. I read grammar books from cover to cover. I knew how the language worked and what it looked like, but after six months I was still unable to say a word. Not only that; I was unable to decipher what people said to me when they spoke Danish.

My Danish mother-in-law once asked me something, and I wanted to say måske (maybe). I knew the word, I saw it in my mind, but because I had no idea how to say it, I just sat there and slowly transformed into a drunken lemur on the verge of going catatonic.

Just give me a bloody beer
Learning Danish can be a scary experience for all concerned. I mention in the introduction to Danish pronunciation that Danish does not tolerate deviations very well. Unlike English, which is spoken in all kinds of dialects and accents all over the world, Danish is very particular about how it is pronounced.

In a diabolical twist, the Danish word for beer happens to be unpronounceable. On a particularly hot summer’s day at the beach, I tried to buy a beer at the kiosk. One might think that “øl” should be easy for anyone to decipher, no matter how much it gets mangled. After 5 attempts, in varying tones, pitches and modulations of voice, having nearly strangled myself with my own tongue, it was starting to get embarrassing for everyone. And I was getting annoyed because this was happening so often. Since then I started asking for a “Carlsberg” instead.

Social learning
I understand my fellow foreigners better than Danes do when they speak Danish. It doesn’t matter that someone speaks with a Farsi or a Spanish accent, foreigners usually know what other foreigners are saying in Danish before a Dane can decipher it. For this reason I think that much of the success of language schools lies in the opportunity for learners to interact in Danish among themselves.

A foreigner speaking Danish enunciates his words distinctly, perhaps not necessarily in a way that native speakers can understand, but for anyone learning Danish it is manna from heaven. I would even go so far as to say (and this is probably heresy in the ears of Danish pedagogues everywhere), that second-language speakers make better language teachers than native speakers do.

If you’ve just arrived in Denmark and you want to learn Danish, I suggest you try to find or establish a social group. You can get together at someone’s place a few times a week and speak Danish to each other. The advantage of learning with your peers is that you share your learning experience. It gives you the opportunity to learn from each other’s mistakes and to generally facilitate your cultural transition.

I like to emphasize this, because living in Denmark especially can be a very alienating experience. It is important not only for your social health, but also for your mental health, that you learn Danish in an environment of your peers. You will probably attend a language school at some point, but it can take many months before that happens.

A few tips
When I learned to speak English, I found that the best method was to read aloud to myself, and I find that it also works well when learning Danish. It allows more automatic language response when you need it, because your mouth is actually involved in the learning; you are not just silently internalizing the rules. With half an hour a day of reading aloud, you should be a fairly confident speaker within a matter of months.

My course encourages you to repeat what you hear, which I consider effective because speaking Danish is as hard as hearing it. The most challenging thing about listening to Danish (or any other language), is that you won’t be able to discern words in a sentence. As far as you can hear, it is just one long string of sounds.

Luckily, Danes tend to use quite a few stock sentences in everyday communication. I spent many years collecting these sentences (they are all in the course), so instead of trying to listen to individual words, you can study sentences and store them in your brain as whole units of information. In many cases you needn’t even know exactly what the sentence is when you you hear it; if you’ve heard it often enough you can usually guess it just from the intonation.

Here are a few more tips, from personal experience:
1. Take one thing at a time. You will want to know everything at once. Don’t frustrate yourself.

2. Don’t get angry. The Danish language has been like this for hundreds of years. The Danes around you have nothing to do with it. It takes centuries of unbridled beer consumption to evolve such an impossible-to-pronounce language.

3. Be spontaneous. Even if you say something stupid and people laugh at you, their laughter is almost never derisive.

4. This might sound obvious, but if you speak English only, you might have the impression that everything in the world has an English bias. Learning a new language will prove you so wrong that it might be painful at times. (This is based on what I’ve seen from other monolingual people trying to learn a new language).

5. Your learning curve is an up-and-down cycle. Some days you’ll feel dense. You can’t learn a thing, and your Danish sounds terrible. Other days you’ll be on a roll. I ascribe it to the mysteries of the brain. Even after a number of years, when you think you’re fluent, you will find yourself overhearing a conversation between Danes and not understand a single word they are saying. I was recently driving with my wife while listening to the radio. Someone had called in to the show to complain about gangs that were harassing diners in outdoor restaurant areas. These gangs simply arrived en masse and took people’s food from their tables, and it was becoming an increasing problem in Copenhagen. The woman complained bitterly. Privately I thought she sounded like a whiny schoolgirl, but of course I said nothing because in fairness it was an outrageous injustice. But then my wife said, with a snicker, “Damn, that woman sounds like such a victim”. I said that it’s only natural, considering she had her food hijacked by a marauding gang of thugs. My wife said, “What gang? They’re talking about seagulls”.

6. Watch a lot of Danish TV. You’ll be surprised how much you learn from reading the subtitles.

7. Make an effort to learn the grammar. It might put a bit of a damper on your spontaneity, but you can’t truly play the blues if you don’t know the chords.

8. Think of it as a daily excursion out of your comfort zone. It can only be good for you.

I’ve briefly touched on this topic in previous posts, but it warrants a hearing of its own because it is an aspect of Danish culture that is probably going to make the most initial impact on you.

Happiest people?
I spoke with a Danish woman recently who was so annoyed with her mother’s overbearing and intrusive behaviour, that she seriously considered breaking all ties with her. In other contexts this might be considered a joke, and this is how I perceived it at first, but in Denmark it is often a harsh reality.

Danish parents and children are almost always at loggerheads, and most of the time the struggle is about independence. Parents often find themselves struggling with the choice between helping their children and just letting them be. Children have been conditioned since birth to develop their own opinions about everything, and when parents try to give them advice they are sometimes spurned in the worst possible way. My friend’s case is not unique: it is not unusual for children to break all contact with their parents if they think they’ve interfered too much.

This sounds drastic, but Danes take their independence very seriously. It is part of what shapes their attitudes towards other people in general, and part of what makes them viewed as unapproachable by those who don’t know them. Foreigners talk about the Danes as being “cold”, but Danes just want to be left alone to do their own thing. They don’t want anyone to interfere in their carefully-crafted lives, and contempt is never so quickly bred as daring to get too familiar with a Dane.

However, it doesn’t take a major family feud for children to abandon their parents. In a society that values personal independence above all else, it is often just the natural outcome of things. Danes simply don’t prioritize their parents as, say, Italians do. Foreigners are often puzzled by how Danes can leave their elderly parents to fend off the ravages of oblivion, alone in their own homes, while the children themselves live just down the road, too busy living their own lives.

Denmark consistently ranks as the happiest country in the world, but for a country with such a special distinction, its people are among the loneliest. In fact, loneliness is the main reason for instances of suicide in Denmark. I would contend that Danes are perhaps more content with having their material needs met, but if suicide rates are anything to go by, it seems that people in the Caribbean and the Middle East are probably much less lonely.

Emotional support
Another salient consequence of this extreme individualism is a general lack of intimacy among Danes. Danes just don’t get too close to each other. It’s best to keep everyone at arm’s length.

Even among friends and family, emotional intimacy is always kept in check to a certain extent, and breaking down and spilling your guts is seen as a weakness by many. Families will disintegrate, friends will succumb to alcoholism and drug abuse, marriages will falter, but people will in most cases suffer in silence. Standing armies of psychologists have now assumed these functions of friends and loved ones, and daily focus on emotional health have come to occupy the slot between shopping for dinner and picking up the kids from kindergarten.

Land of paradoxes
Before I came to Denmark, I knew a group of Danes back home. One day I was visiting them, and they mentioned that someone called Henrik was arriving from Denmark. We went to pick him up at the airport. Everyone was speaking Danish to each other, so I wasn’t quite informed about the whole situation, but it took me a few days to figure out that Henrik was not part of the group. He was a complete stranger to everyone, and yet I got the distinct impression that everyone not only knew him, but that he was somehow related to one of the others. He simply integrated with the rest of the Danes, like a drop of water merging into a puddle (or, depending on your perspective, a blob of molten metal merging with its evil terminator collective).

Happy family

I remember how I envied being able to relate to others so easily, and I imagined what a big, happy family Denmark must be. I was attracted by the idea of egalitarianism and the implications it held for relationships among people in a greater society, how it can facilitate collective expressions of ordinary people’s wishes in a true democracy, how it can allow the individual to grow with others to attain his full potential, without fear and intimidation.

I foresaw endless scenarios of people realizing and expressing the full extents of their imagination. But in Denmark I found a paradoxical place, where such an environment exists, yet its imagination is held in check by an invisible power. The country’s character and essence is determined and defined simultaneously by a collective, consensus-driven will and an extreme individualism. People have a solid and intimate implicit understanding of each other, yet they choose to live in ways that isolate themselves from each other.

If you are not used to it, the aloofness and isolation that springs from this kind of individualism will seem unfortunate, and it will wrack your brain. But if you are going to live in Denmark, it will, for better or for worse, inevitably become part of your reality.

According to the old adage, travel broadens the mind. The mechanisms for this mind-broadening lie in the combination of the fact that we are all deeply cultural beings and that living in a strange land will grab you by the back of your neck and shake you out of everything you’ve ever imagined yourself to be.

You might have heard of culture shock before, but perhaps you hadn’t realized that it was a psychological phenomenon. Like grieving, which consists of multiple phases (denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance), culture shock is a fairly well-defined process of adapting to your new cultural landscape.

The honeymoon
A new country is a new state of mind, and if you are naturally curious you will always be drawn to the exotic “other side”. The honeymoon phase is a fantastic wild ride of new impressions and ideas. You are in a constant state of suspended disbelief, wonder and beautiful ignorance, during which the newness of the world asserts itself with a fresh and different vigour.

Dreamy Denmark - land of greener pastures

Although this is typically a short-lived phase, your inability to understand the language perfectly for a year or two will essentially also blind you to many of the country’s hidden and harsher realities. The language might seem like a magical shroud that conceals a yet-to-be-discovered world of wonder, but the deeper you navigate into its stark wilderness, the more eerily familiar and mundane your new surroundings will become. You will find that the Danes use their otherworldly and impenetrable language to talk about the exact same everyday things as the people in the village of your disconsolate youth that you’ve so fervently spurned in your search for new pastures.

Negotiation
Within a matter of weeks the annoyances begin to creep up on you. People are not doing things the way you are used to. The little idiosyncrasies and differences used to be charming, but now they’re getting on your nerves. You feel disorientated, confused, angry, out of your depth. Why do they have to be so damn rigid about everything? Why does the language have to be so damn hard? Illogical and abstract as it may sound, you will blame every Dane you meet for their crazy language.

You will always find something to complain about, even after having lived in Denmark for years, and this phase is when much of it will begin to dawn on you.

You might at this point feel a certain calling. A great power has summoned you to be its emissary of truth, to convert the Danes from their evil ways. I’ll spare you a lot of trouble: The Danes don’t want to hear it. They don’t care. They’ve heard it all before.

The same goes for whatever ministry of foreigner affairs that you feel has treated you unfairly and whose outrageous injustices and inhumane policies should immediately be made international knowledge. Unless you plan on becoming a Danish politician in the near future and fighting the system from the inside (as politicians do), it is probably best to concentrate your energies on more pressing exigencies, like getting a job and learning Danish.

It is a good idea to find some other newly-arrived foreigners in Denmark. Establish a network. Your early networks will be strongest and will last for many years to come. You can get together and complain to each other all you like. Write a blog about your feelings, experiences and grievances and put it out there for all and sundry to read (but be sure to shroud it all in a thin veil of wry humour).

Acceptance
So, your crusade to change your host country to suit your needs hasn’t delivered the expected results. Welcome to Denmark! It will take a while, but much of it will begin to make sense, and the amalgamation of your previous and new world views will be an improvement over your old self.

Of course, not everyone manages to integrate equally well. Many sustain a lifelong trauma from culture shock, which not even re-immersion into the native culture can relieve.

Going home
In fact, re-immersion into your native culture is a bit of a cold comfort. At some point during your inner turmoils and tribulations you realize that “home” is a very fluid concept. You realize it most acutely when you go back home after a number of years in Denmark and discover how much of the Danish culture you’ve internalized. This is popularly known as “reverse culture shock”. The red pill has taken you deeper down the rabbit hole than you’d expected or ever imagined. Maybe a bit too deep, because now you emerged on the other side of the world, and everything is upside-down.

During my first visit to my beloved homeland after a few years’ absence, I became very annoyed with the everyday inefficiencies and random breakdowns in simple logic. Why don’t they have that separator thing in supermarkets, like the Danes have, that separates your groceries from other people’s on the checkout counter? Why do people queue in the post office when they can just take a number and wait wherever they like?

Being back home was nowhere near as exuberant and blissful an experience as I’d spent so many years making myself believe it would be. It was downright ordinary. My old friends had steadily been going on with their own lives, and were mostly too busy doing their own thing to be curious about what life in Denmark was like. Where is Denmark anyway? It gets cold there, doesn’t it? Have I ever seen a polar bear?

If there is one thing the average Dane would mention that makes him most proud of his heritage, it would probably be the Danish sense of fairness, justice and equality. Children are taught from a young age to treat others like they themselves would like to be treated. Parents and teachers are but links in a long chain of egalitarian tradition that has its roots in something called Janteloven, or the laws of Jante. It comes from a novel by a Danish/Norwegian writer, and its basic tenet is that you shouldn’t think too highly of yourself. You are part of a humble human collective, and if you try to fly too high, it is everyone else’s imperative to bring you down to earth by any means possible.

Take me to your leader
In the Danish workplace it is sometimes impossible to see who the boss is. I was often surprised by how often the real boss would be interrupted in his morning staff briefings by anyone and everyone who had an opinion about the matter. Rather than an elevated authority that boomed his message down to the masses, the boss seemed to be an aggregator of ideas, inconspicuously melding with the rest of the workforce. In matters that affected the group, his own opinions carried exactly as much weight as everyone else’s, but if he caught you dawdling, he was as much the butt-kicking, cigar-sucking boss you’d find in any other totalitarian and soul-crushing bulwark of human oppression around the world.

Because you are a free citizen, you are entitled to be treated as such. This means that you cannot be exploited economically. You have a right to work for a decent wage. Jobs that are disparaged by the rich (and the poor) in other countries, like garbage collecting, sweeping the streets and cleaning toilets are as respectable as being a doctor, engineer or a teacher (wait, scrap that last one).

Waiters are not tipped, because they actually get paid by their employers (the food is expensive enough to have included a tip anyway). And the Skattefar, or tax daddy, makes sure that he takes enough money from you so you are well shielded from any delusions of grandeur you might sustain from your toilet-cleaning job.

Counting old people’s teeth
Attitudes towards children are similarly egalitarian: children are in many ways equal to adults, only smaller. Danes don’t have honorary appellatives like Mr, Mrs, Ms or even Doctor and Professor. They do exist, but mostly only in parodic contexts. Children call adults by their first names, and adults likewise treat children like intelligent individuals.

A few years ago, at the dinner table, the topic of homosexuality came up. There was a young girl of about 7 or 8 present. She asked what a homosexual was. Her mother told her, and then continued with the conversation. My own parents would’ve suffered mild seizures, then agonized over the question for a week.

Discussing world matters

Danish children are informed about adult topics from the moment they are old enough to ask about them. They are encouraged to actively participate in adult discussions and to have opinions about things. I myself was told to be seen and not heard, and not to “count old people’s teeth”. They would invite me to their discussion when I was big enough.

I’m still waiting.

This open relationship between children and parents lays the foundation for how they relate to each other in the future, but this doesn’t necessarily predict a rosy scenario. It often means that children, who are naturally entitled to everything, are just more vocal about their need for freedom and independence later in life, which often leads to slightly strained feelings when parents try to assert their right to interfere. This creates the impression in foreigners that Danish parents and children are always fighting. Children from more traditional families would probably just suppress their true feelings in these situations, making everything seem a lot more harmonious than they really are.

Bricks in the wall?
Because everyone is equal, social consensus is established early in a Dane’s life. There are no outrageous anomalies in the social way of things, so it is learned without difficulty. The social model is simple enough for all to grasp. There are many aspects to this, and everyone has his own crazy theory.

Crazy theory 1: the language. The Danish language is the prime instrument in the functional universe that inhabits the mind of the Dane. Its relation to the world is linear and complete. Nothing else exists outside it. Unlike English, it hasn’t raided, plundered and looted sounds and impressions from faraway shores to the extent that a Danish speaker is in a constant state of uncertainty, curiosity and conjecture about the world he lives in.

Danish is content with what it can see and touch. It doesn’t aspire to the ethereal and fantastical. Many Danes describe their knowledge of Danish as “complete”, something no English speaker would ever dream of doing.

It creates the impression in me that Danes have everything wrapped up in a neat bundle. Their egalitarian world-view is simply a facilitator, a tool with which to trim off all the pesky, uneven bits of uncertainty. And to an extent it is something I admire and envy, because Danes are almost completely without chaos.

Crazy theory 2: everything else. Everything else that Danes do simply reinforces my first crazy theory. An overwhelming sense of conformity infuses the entire fabric of Danish culture. My first thoughts, as I landed here, were that sensual impressions seemed wilfully subdued. I was constantly seeking the outrageous colours, sounds and smells of my homeland.

Menaces to democracy

The other day, while reading a computer magazine in the library, one of the letters to the editor complained about the magazine being too colourful. The editor used half a page to apologize and to explain the reason for using all those colours.

Instead of finding it absurd, I found some small solace in it. It confirmed my thoughts. Dissenting colours are an aberration and a menace to democracy.