How to Live in Denmark

• September, elite sport, and the not-quite death of Jante Law: The Danish Year Part 9

  Denmark may be a small country, but it produces world-class athletes in cycling, tennis, handball, badminton, and golf. How do they do it? And how does the tax-financed effort to create athletic champions fit with the culture code of "Jante Law", the idea is that no one should think themselves better than anyone else?  September is when fall sports season starts in Denmark. The badminton league begins, so does volleyball and basketball and hockey. Most importantly, the handball season kicks off, and while I’m not a handball fan myself, I always know when that season is underway because my otherwise mild-mannered downstairs neighbor begins screaming at his flatscreen, cheering on or scolding Denmark’s handball girls or handball boys, the teams are equally popular in Denmark.  Team handball was invented in Denmark – and like design, it’s a national passion. Danish teams have won several World Championships and many Olympic Gold Medals. Football, otherwise known as soccer, is popular too, although given the international competition, it’s a bit harder for little Denmark to win championships. The Danish national team did win a European championship in 1992, something any Danish man over 40 will be happy to discuss with you in great detail. Right now there are more than 300,000 registered football players in Denmark if you count amateur, pro, and semi-pro teams. The population of Denmark is 6 million. That means one out of every 20 Danes is on a football team. Danish athletes are not particularly rich, and the ones who do make big money have tapped into markets outside of Denmark. The most famous is badminton player Viktor Axelsen. Since badminton is most popular in Asia, Viktor Axelsen learned fluent Mandarin Chinese. There are lots of endorsements in the Chinese market. The golfing Højgaard twins, Rasmus and Nicolai, make their money on the international golf circuits, in particular the PGA.  Both of them also have endorsement deals. And Tour de France winner Jonas Vingegaard makes his money not just in France, but also via international endorsements.   Many Danes do sports in their spare time. A bike ride through Copenhagen wouldn’t be complete without a middle-aged Lycra lout cyclist who thinks he’s Jonas Vingegaard speeding past you in the bike lanes, sometimes screaming “Bagfra!” or “I’m coming up behind you!” Besides criminals and welfare cheats, these are the least liked men in Denmark. And many Danes are involved with what’s often described as hygge sports, where the win or the loss isn’t as important as the beers with your buddies or pasta with your girls afterwards. These leagues cover the entire lifespan – old boys football clubs or old girls rowing teams can keep you fit long past retirement age – and they often start in childhood. Schools in Denmark have physical education classes – under the old Viking word idraet – but they rarely have school sports teams. Sports are played through clubs, mostly amateur clubs, which is nice for the kids, because if they don’t have many friends at school they can make different friends at their sports club. These clubs are part of a huge network connected to Team Denmark, which is a government project to create Denmark’s future sports stars. It’s always funny to me that there is so much support for elite sport development in a country so keen on Jante Law. Under the Jante Law, the idea is that no one should think themselves better than anyone else. You see this in Danish working culture, and you also see it in the educational system. Smart kids in Denmark don’t get a boost – they’re expected to just attend ordinary classes and help their slower classmates. There are very few gifted and talented programs, and unlike Germany or the UK, Denmark doesn’t academically track children when they’re 10 or 11, sending some to more challenging academic programs. In Denmark, you can get away with messing around and doing very little in school until your second year of high school – gymnasium – around age 17 or 18, and then buckle down and end up finding yourself in med school or international business, two of the most sought-after university programs. But, in sport, Denmark begins looking for talent very early. The local sports clubs work with Team Denmark to create a pipeline of talented kids. Team Denmark, which is part of the culture ministry, has been around for forty years, but it constantly updates which sports it supports. Being practical Danes, they aim for sports in which little Denmark has a good chance of big success. Right now, that’s badminton, handball, cycling, plus the various sports played on or in the water – sailing, kayaking, swimming, rowing. Denmark has a long tradition of sports that involve boats or water. With all its little islands and fjords, it has more coastline than India. By age 13, these kids are offered places in talent centers or elite sports schools, and when they’re 15 and ready for secondary schools, there will be an elite sport track that gives them flexibility to train and compete. Danish universities offer flexibility for the athletes of Team Denmark when it comes to papers and exams. Some companies even offer part-time internships for Denmark’s elite athletes, so they can keep their civilian career on track while pursuing their sport. Of course, once they’ve succeeded at that sport, Jante Law kicks in again. Danish athletes who win things are expected to give credit to their teammates, to their trainers, to the collective effort. To say things like, well, “I was third, I got the bronze, but I could have easily been fourth.” They’re also expected to stay in Denmark and pay Danish taxes. Viktor Axelsen found himself rather unpopular when he moved to Dubai. His excuse was the better flight connections to badminton matches Asia, as well as the dry weather being good for his asthma, but everyone knew the difference between 56% income tax on top earners in Denmark and 0% in Dubai probably weighed in his decision. The ideal Danish elite athlete is probably Michael Laudrup, who played football at the highest levels throughout Europe in the 1990s, but was always very humble about his skills. After he retired he came back to Denmark, where he now runs a wine business, does some Danish TV commentary, and no doubt pays substantial Danish taxes. This is sporting success in one of the most egalitarian countries in the world. And that’s the How to Live in Denmark podcast for this week. You can read all our of episodes of the Danish Year series at howtoliveindenmark.com, or book me, Kay Xander Mellish, for a speech to your group or organization, anywhere in the world. I love to travel; make me an offer. You can also get our books at books.howtoliveindenmark.com. See you next time!  

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• August, The first day of school, and how children learn to be Danish: The Danish Year Part 8

  Denmark is a very good place to be a child, and to have children, yet the birthrate is dropping as it is in so many other countries. Some preschools have shut down due to lack of kids. Just this year Denmark reached a population of 6 million –  a big landmark -  but that’s mostly due to immigration, not more children being born. All the initiatives that experts recommend for increasing fertility in other countries already exist in Denmark, like child payments for parents, long parental leaves after childbirth, good universal day care, and tax-funded health care.  The Danish government even offers free fertility treatment for the first and second child, and it offers this to single women as well as committed couples. Yet fertility is well below replacement levels, at about 1.5 children per woman in 2024. Why are there not more babies ? My guess is long educational requirements for both men and women – you really can’t get anywhere in business without a masters’ degree - plus high housing prices in the big cities.  Enormous resources on kids I’ve been spending a lot of time with Danish children lately. I make my living giving speeches about Danish working culture to corporate groups or academics, but in the summer there aren’t many of those, so I like to take on other jobs and learn about Danish working culture from the inside. (You can't be an expert on Danish working culture without continually fresh experience of working in Denmark!) This summer I’ve been working at several preschools that serve ages 3 to 6, a great age to work with. They’re old enough to be verbal and express interesting ideas, but not so old that they are flabet, which is the Danish word for sassy, talking back. The Danish government spends enormous resources on kids, in particular preschool kids. A preschool in Copenhagen Denmark One of the preschools where I work, owned by the Copenhagen municipality, is built just for that purpose, with high ceilings and big windows, a seemingly infinite number of toys, five separate playgrounds with trees and sandboxes, a pillow room for jumping around on rainy days, and an extensive kitchen where professional cooks prepare meals. One day this summer we had a very nice baked salmon with rice and broccoli, followed by a snack of fresh strawberries, granola, and yogurt.  We adults practice "educational eating" which means we eat lunch with the small children to work on table manners and appropriate table conversation.    Read more at howtoliveindenmark.com.   

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• July, Nature in Denmark, and following The Daisy Route: The Danish Year Part 7

  July is vacation month in Denmark, and it’s ironic that many Danes go elsewhere on vacation at just this time of year, when you have the best chance of good weather in Denmark. And I do mean chance – there is never any guarantee. Some Danes go abroad, driving vacations to Southern Europe are popular. There’s a well-known cycle in which the summer weather is good one year, so everyone plans a vacation in Denmark the following year, and then the weather is awful, so everyone plans a foreign vacation the next year, and then the weather is good, and so on. You can surf in Denmark Staying in Denmark, even if you don’t own one of the famous Danish summer houses, can be a great choice. There’s a surprising amount of nature to experience in this small, flat, country that isn’t as densely populated as the UK, or the Netherlands, or even Germany. You can surf in Denmark, along the windy west coast, and when you’re done explore the ever changing sand dunes. Maybe visit the little lighthouse that is slowly being swallowed up by the sand. Hike through ancient forests in Denmark In Denmark you can hike through ancient forests, and even sleep there in some of the public forest shelters. Most of the forest shelters are big wooden boxes with one side entirely open, but with a roof to protect you from the rain. You can walk through beautiful meadows filled with wildflowers and butterflies. Watch whales along the coastline. Tramp through marshes and see red foxes and white-tailed eagles. Visit open grasslands with a few wild horses. Chalk cliffs and fossil hunting in Denmark You can enjoy almost any type of Nordic landscape except mountains, because Denmark doesn’t really have any. It’s tallest peak, Møllehøj, is 1/3 the height of the Empire State Building. But if you insist on rocky peaks, you can visit some lovely chalk cliffs in Denmark and try fossil hunting in the sand. And what ties them all together is the Marguerite Route, or Daisy Route, that runs all over Denmark. The Daisy Route isn’t a straight line from one place to another, like Route 66 in the US or the Trans-Siberian express. It’s 4200 kilometers, or 2600 miles, that looks like a plate of spaghetti, with lots of curves and twists. It takes you on back roads where you can see the quiet side of Denmark. It never doubles back on itself and, with one significant exception – the Big Belt Bridge between Zealand and Fyn – it involves no highways. Margueritruten Route or the Daisy Route The Daisy Route is named after the former queen, Margrethe, who inaugurated it on her 50th birthday in 1991. Her nickname is Daisy. And the signs you will follow on the Daisy Route are brown squares with white daisies. The Daisy Route is a great way to enjoy Danish nature, although, unfortunately, it works best with a car. Bikes in the city, cars in the countryside One of Denmark’s little secrets is that despite all the tourism pictures of healthy Danes riding bicycles, bicycle infrastructure is best in the big cities. Many roads in the countryside don’t have a bike lane, and you probably don’t want to be on a lonely country road on your bike with a cement mixer truck behind you. Outside of those big cities, most Danes do own cars – and there are more cars in Denmark every year, even though they’re very expensive and parking enforcement is draconian. From the window of my home in Copenhagen, I watch cars being hit with parking fines every single weekday. Denmark’s founding document, the Jelling Stone What about mass transit? Can you enjoy the Daisy Route using trains and buses? You can indeed, if you want to see some of the major cultural spots on the route. For example, the Jelling Stone, the giant carved stone that is Denmark’s founding document, kind of its Magna Carta or Declaration of Independence. Put up by King Harold Bluetooth in the year 965, it marks Denmark’s transition to the centralized monarchy it still has today. And yes, Bluetooth on your phone is named after him. The Jelling Stone is very easy to reach by train. Finding Fossils on Møns Klimt Or Kronborg Castle in Helsingør, also known as Elsinore in Shakespeare’s play Hamlet. You can easily take public transport to the castle, where Hamlet lived in the play, and the guard Marcellus said “Something is Rotten in Denmark.” Although Shakespeare apparently never visited the castle himself, you can. It’s a simple trip with train, bus, or even ferry from Sweden. But the some of the best stops on the Daisy Route in Denmark don’t work well with mass transit. For example, Møns Klimt is a dramatic white chalk cliff on an island in southeast Denmark. You can walk along the beach finding prehistoric fossils during the day or go stargazing at night, because there’s very little light pollution. Summer vacation chill in Denmark To get to Møns Klimt from my home in Copenhagen is a 90 minute car trip…or a 4-hour odyssey involving three trains, two buses, and a long walk. Or a 7-hour bike trip. It can be done without a car, but it may take away some of your vacation chill. And vacation chill is what July in Denmark is all about. Everything closes down Many companies in Denmark shut down for the last two weeks of July and sometimes the first week of August, restaurants and shops are closed, many church services are suspended. Even my local ice cream shop in Copenhagen closes down, although I’m sure the ones in tourist locations are open and very busy. You may get to enjoy this in glorious summer sunshine, and on a sunny day, there is no country as pretty as Denmark. Or you could experience it in cold, pelting rain – possibly on the same day. Danish summer weather has no guarantees.

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• June: Danish pride, women in uniform, and the reverse Jante Law: The Danish Year Part 6

  As of this month, girls who turn 18 can be drafted into the Danish military.  This is new, even though girls in Norway and Sweden have been eligible for the draft for some time. Denmark is proud of its record on gender equality, so maybe it’s a wonder it hasn’t happened sooner. After all, more than half of the medical doctors in Denmark are female.  More than half of the priests in Denmark are female. The prime minister is female. At only about 10% female, the military is clearly lagging behind. The way the military draft in Denmark works is like this: Boys, and soon girls, who have just turned 18 are invited to an obligatory  “Defense Day” where their physical and cognitive abilities are tested. If these are satisfactory, you get a lottery number, and if the Danish military doesn’t get enough volunteers to meet its needs, you will be called up.  In recent years, there have been plenty of volunteers, so getting enough people hasn’t been much of a problem. And getting into the Royal Life Guards, real-life soldiers who also protect the Danish Royal Family, remains very high status. It’s where Denmark’s future powerbrokers meet each other. In 2023, there were about 5000 volunteers, and roughly 25% of them were female. At least in peacetime, the forces have attracted many young women who are athletes, almost as if it were a very disciplined form of an extreme sports challenge.   Read more at howtoliveindenmark.com.  Image created by Kay Xander Mellish via Midjourney, inspired by Danish painters Vilhelm Lundstrøm and CW Eckersberg. Buy the NFT on uncut.network.

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• May, the candle in the window, and getting old in Denmark: The Danish Year Part 5

  There's a lovely May tradition in Denmark of setting a candle in the window on the evening of May 4. This is to commemorate the surrender of the Germans and the end of the Nazi occupation in 1945.  The Nazis imposed a blackout on Denmark to confuse the Allied air forces, so now that they were defeated, a candle in a window became a small symbol of rebellious light. I intend to participate every year on May 4, but I often forget, and to be honest I see very few candles in windows these days.  A rememberance ceremony, forgotten You’d have to be aged 85 or older now to remember the war, and Germany is one of Denmark’s greatest friends and Allies.  In addition, the elderly who do remember the occupation and the blackout generally do not live with their families in Denmark, families to whom they might pass on the tradition.  Old people in Denmark primarily live alone, and municipal employees come to their house once or twice a week to help with cleaning and make sure they take their medicine.  When they can no longer take care of themselves, they’re moved to a publicly-funded care home or a hospice, but this is generally only for the last few months of life. Living cooperatives against loneliness The elderly in Denmark are often lonely.  In India or the Middle East, older people usually live with their families; in the US, where I come from, they join “active adult” communities where they can golf and have affairs.  The Danish policy that encourages old people to remain in their homes as long as they can isolates them, in my opinion.  That’s why the Danish government, mindful of the fact that the average age in Denmark is advancing quickly, is encouraging the idea of bofæelleskab, or living cooperatives. That’s when a number of older people live together in a house or large apartment, a bit like university students, with a shared kitchen and laundry facilities.  This gives them a bit of company and, not coincidentally, frees up a lot of individual houses for younger families to move in when the old people move out.  You're not the hip new designer or management trainee Now, when I say old people, I’m talking about people over 67, which is the current Danish pension age. That will crawl up to age 70 for kids born today.  The problem for many people is that it’s hard to get a job after age 60. No one wants to hire you as a hip new designer or innovative pharma developer or management trainee.  Older people at the very top of the success ladder often spend this time on various Boards of Directors, leveraging their years of business experience.  Below that I meet a lot of older people who have tossed their career and their specialized educations aside and become office managers, or work in retail, or work in kindergartens.  They’re done climbing the career ladder and want something people-focused that is, and I quote, “something to do until I retire.” A word to honor the old in Denmark Old people don’t get any special respect in Danish culture.  I taught a group of Nepali students in Denmark once, and after the presentation in the Q&A period, they wanted to know if there were some special Danish word they could use to honor the elderly, an important part of their culture in Nepal.  But there’s no specific word in Denmark to honor the elderly. Especially these days, when the people who are old now are the former 1960s hippies who got rid of honorifics like Herr Hansen and Fru Jensen.  The elderly today in Denmark are called by their first names, just like everyone else.  Read more at howtoliveindenmark.com.

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