About the Danes
Denmark is a Scandinavian country, but not a very Scandinavian country. It has no midnight sun, no ski-jumps and no reindeer. Outsiders tend to think that all Scandinavians are the same, but they are not. The Swedes are the Prussians of the North; they stand up straight, dress alike and do what they are told. The Norwegians are like the Scots; a hardy mountain folk.
The Danes are more relaxed and easy-going. They tend to sit down: it increases the chances of everyone seeing eye to eye. The differences between these three peoples is best understood by considering the most famous writer of each country: Hans Christian Andersen for Denmark, Ibsen for Norway, and Strindberg for Sweden.
They are also reflected in attitudes to alcohol. In Denmark alcohol is freely available. In Norway and Sweden alcohol sales are under state control; a licence is needed not only to sell alcohol, but also to buy it. Yet, if someone is noisily drunk in Copenhagen, just across the water from Sweden, there is a better than even chance that the drunk is a Swedish export.
The Danes think of their neighbours as they would members of their family. The other Scandinavian countries are of course brothers. Norway is accepted as equal, perhaps even slightly admired for its natural beauty and exclusivity. Sweden is the boring older brother who thinks he knows best. The Finns are moody, unpredictable and possibly autistic. Germany is the indulgent uncle, patting heads with disconcerting shows of affection.
The Swedish countryside is much admired and many Danes holiday in Sweden, but they feel somehow that Swedes don't deserve their wonderful surroundings. Sweden in Danish eyes is a cultural and human desert. Taxes are extortionate, there are rules about everything and a beer costs about £5 in a café. Both countries have fines for dogs fouling the pavement, but in Sweden you actually get caught.
In the spirit of New Europe, Danes try very hard to like the Germans, but it's hard work. They are convinced that the Germans are trying to take over Europe, cunningly disguised as tourists. They are intensely concerned that the pølse tyskere (sausage Germans) will buy Jutland as soon as they get the chance and turn it into a windsurfing centre. Germans regularly fall asleep on their sailboards and have to be fished out of the North Sea halfway to Grimsby by the long-suffering Danish air-sea rescue service. All the summer houses are rented out to Germans, there are even German editions of local newspapers, and LEGOLAND, complete with a part of the Rhein Valley, is filled to the brim with Germans determined to enjoy themselves.
Germans are more acceptable if they buy plenty of Danish products. They are also partially forgiven for being German if they employ Danes in their businesses.
Inflation in Denmark is negligible, the economy is strong and technical development is worldclass - not bad for a country with a population roughly that of south London. The Danes attribute this success to their having all the virtues of their neighbours and none of their vices. They share the Germans' methodical attention to detail and the Swedes' egalitarianism and level-headedness. Gone is the plodding, constipated German imagination (or lack of it) and the dreary Swedish party-pooping pedantry. According to the Danes, what's left is a unique mixture of conscientiousness and informality which makes the Danish overseas traveller breathe a sigh of relief when he crosses the border home.
High Fliers
The Danes fly their flag with pride. The red and white 'Dannebrog' against a dear blue sky is enough to bring a tear to their eyes. Rural inhabitants invariably have their own flag pole set squarely in the middle of their garden. Town dwellers rent an allotment and plant a pole along with their broadleaved parsley. Both have lists of dates magneted to the fridge giving details of when to 'let rip' -public holidays, festivals, state visits, their own birthdays, anniversaries, etc., and town 'fétes'.
Twice a month each town lines its main street with flags to remind everyone that the local shops stay open late that Saturday. Danes who cannot fly flags out of doors have mini flagpoles as part of their table decoration for high days and holidays, and they even fly the flag from the food on cocktail-sticks. Shops and advertisers use the flag to promote their goods, and Danish football fans were the first to paint their faces with their national flag.
There is nothing threatening about this nationalism. As a nation, the Danes have not been a threat to anyone for hundreds of years.
How they see others
The rugged individualism of American society is at odds with the importance which Danes attach to social cohesion. Americans are seen as useful allies and the scientific research they generate is admired, but if a situation is approaching unacceptable levels, for example, the children are being fed too much fast food, a Danish academic of some description will appear on the news prodaiming that Denmark is hurtling towards an 'amerikansk tilstand' (an American state of affairs).
The British are regarded as class-ridden with Dickensian social values, a view supported by costume dramas shown on television. This does not prevent Danes from showing great enthusiasm for pop music and English league football. Though deeply censonous of the Germans and pitying of the Swedes, the Danes are angels of patience and tolerance when it comes to the English. The drunken buffoonery of the English football fans is met with smiles of understanding. The sight of an Arsenal fan halfway up a lamppost swilling beer from the anus of an infiatable rubber pig caused little more than some shaking of heads. A German or a Swede would have been arrested and heavily fined.
The Danes look on the outside world confident that they may not have achieved a perfect society, but they have got closer to it than most other people. There are really only two things that Danes may envy other nations: one is warm winters, and the other is a beautiful language.
How they see themselves
Efficient, environmentally conscious and generous to those less fortunate are the kind of words most Danes would use to describe themselves and their sociéty today. However, behind this idyllic description, lurks the Danish tax man, 'skattefar' (tax daddy), wielding more power than George Orwell's Big Brother.
The substantial taxes needed to support the well-devel-oped welfare system (about 50%) seem to be chalking up an ever-widening distinction between those who work and those who don't. Scratch the surface and you find that the Danes' image of themselves varies a great deal.
At one extreme there are self-employed Danes who see themselves as freedom fighters. For them, hours of extra paperwork mean that a working day often stretches out into the night, and 'black work' (moonlighting) is a national sport. At the other extreme, a number of Danes languishing on one of the highest unemployment benefits in Europe are willing to fail compulsory job interviews to let fellow citizens have the jobs that are available.
The majority of the population happily jogs along on the verge of Utopia, somewhere between the two.
Danes think that being Danish is a privilege and makes them special. They say that if Scandinavia is a bowl of rice pudding, Denmark is the 'smørhul' - the golden hollow in the middle, full of melted butter.
The Danes' mission in life is to help the rest of the world to see just how wonderful Denmark is. They feel sorry for all the poor souls who aren't Danish, have never visited the country, or otherwise live in heathen ignorance of their land of milk and honey. However, they cannot bring themselves to boast about how fantastically talented they are so they use an inordinate amount of time and energy trying to get others to see the light.
How they see other Danes
Even within such a small country as Denmark there are strong regional differences. Copenhageners make great show of not being able to understand some of the thicker regional accents in Jutland and regard travelling there with foreboding. Jutlanders are seen as rural masters of understatement. According to popular belief, the Jutlander rarely says anything downright positive, e.g. when asked if he wants coffee, he doesn't say "Yes", he says "I wouldn't say no." Jutlanders see Copenhageners as slick, silver-tongued city-dwellers who do them an injustice. They daim they are "not as bad" as all that.
In fact, all Danes have a better opinion of themselves than they allow themselves to express.
How others see them
The Danes are seen as the epitome of good order and good sense. They are not very excitable or romantic, they have neat painted houses set in neat countryside and wear sensible shoes - a bit like the Swiss, but without the mountains.
Their language is unlearnable, their cultural identity elusive, but everybody likes the Danes. It is impossible not to like the creators of LEGO, the producers of so much bacon and butter, and the brewers of (probably) the best beer in the world.
The language
Danish is not a beautiful language. But it is economical. Why invent a new word when two old ones are perfectly adequate? For example, direct translations give: the dust sucker (vacuum cleaner), swine meat (pork), heating meat (stewing beef), body burning (cremation), flying machine (aeroplane) and breast wart (nippie). Words, like everything else, are recyded where possible: hej means hello, hej, hej means goodbye.
The verb at lide can mean to suffer or to like. Fyr means fire, pine or young man. Brud means rupture, bride or weasel. Listeners have to pay attention to context and tone of voice If misunderstandings are to be avoided. Perhaps this is why Denmark produces about 25% of the world's hearing aids.
Danes, Norwegians and Swedes are tuned to each other's languages and can converse in their native tongues, though Danish and Norwegian sound very different. It has been observed that people in hilly countries speak with up-and-down sing-song accents. People in flat countries speak with flat accents. Denmark is a flat country.
There is no system of phonetic notation that can do justice to spoken Danish. The consonants are often 50 softly enunciated as to be undetectable except to the trained ear, while the language possesses vowels which require the speaker to make noises that would be madmissible in polite society in any other civilised country.
Then there's the 'r'. The Italians and Scots roll their r's at the tip of their tongues; the German guttural 'r' is pronounced from the back of the throat. The Danish 'r' has to be fetched from deep below the tonsils, and requires special muscies.
A knowledge of the Danish alphabet may seem esoteric, but it can be helpful to know that, in looking up words in a dictionary, names in a telephone directory or places in a street map, v and w may be treated as being the same, aa is the same as å, and that æ, ø and å are at the end of the alphabet. Anyone looking for Aabenraa at the start of a list will look in vain.
The one unequivocally positive thing that can be said about the Danes and their language is that they are endlessly tolerant of those who try to speak it. Maybe they recognise that Danish is so unspeakably difficult, no foreigner can make it worse.
Source: Xenophobe's Guide to the Danes (ISBN: 1-85304-579-9)