How to Live in Denmark

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 [https://voicemap.me/tour/helsingor/helsingor-old-town-walking-tour-hamlet-s-castle-and-the-little-merman], 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.

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.

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.

As the long Danish winter finally draws to an end, it’s time for Danes to start planting their gardens.  Now, in early April, it’s rhubarb, parsnips, cabbage. After the risk of frost is gone, in late April, you can put down some beets, and chives, and parsley – all good traditional Danish food.  By May, you can try with the tomatoes, which may or may not ripen depending on whether you get a warm, sunny summer, always a roll of the dice in Denmark. One year we ended up with hard, green tomatoes in September.  Short growing season The growing season in Denmark is short. If you miss the planting deadlines, you’re probably out of luck.  And even if you are in luck, the amount you spend at the garden center will far outstrip the amount it would take you to buy the same foods at the corner market. But Danes love to garden, they love to touch the Earth. Denmark industrialized fairly late compared to the rest of Europe – really not until the late 19th century – and even then it focused on cooperative agriculture for export. Denmark is still known around the world for its butter and bacon. The "gaard" is the family farm Many Danes still carry the name of their family farm in the name they use today.  The Danish word for farm is “gaard”, so the names of jewelry designer Ole Lynggaard, or golfer Nicolai Højgaard, or politician Pia Kjærsgaard, all reference what was once the family farm, the “gaard”. This love for nature why weather is always an appropriate topic of conversation among Danes. They’re also very good at historical weather. They’ll tell you that the rains this April are just like the rains of April 2014, or that we haven’t seen this type of wind since the summer of 2006. Colony gardens If you live in Denmark with a house in the suburbs with – parcel houses, they’re often called – you have lots of room for gardening. But people who live in apartments often have what is called “colony gardens.” Colony gardens are a little patch of land set aside in the cities, or near them, for urban residents to have a garden. They usually build a little house on the plot as well, although you’re only allowed to live there during the summer. The electricity and the water usually get switched off during the winter.  The houses are generally wooden, small, cramped, and a little thrown-together. There are often chipped plates and glasses, old chairs with cushions in a grandmotherly fabric, a few board games ready for rainy days. A flag pole and a big Danish flag to put up for holidays. And always, always, they are surrounded by a hedge for privacy.  The colony gardens are run by an association, so you’re supposed to be friends with your neighbors, but keep them at a distance. Good fences make good neighbors and all that.  Getting a colony garden requires either buying one or getting on a long, long list to get one, which means that very few of the 15% non-ethnic Danish residents of Denmark have colony gardens. As I mentioned in an earlier podcast, the list of residents tends to look like the 1957 Copenhagen phone book.  The Unity Garden In my Copenhagen neighborhood, which is extremely diverse, there was initiative to change this a few years ago. A little bit of land freed up by the railroad tracks, and the idea was to create a Unity Garden. Half of the land was set off for people who were not born in Denmark, and half was set off for people who were.  The idea was to meet up, work together, exchange knowledge, have summer picnics, meet across cultures.  Read more at howtoliveindenmark.com

Gækkebrev are a great Danish tradition, but like many other Danish traditions, they are fighting to survive amid the country’s ambitious digital agenda.  What is a gækkebrev, or gække letter? A single piece of paper, cut into a lace-like design somewhat like a snowflake, sent anonymously in the days before Easter. A poem is handwritten on the letter, but it is unsigned...except for a number of dots that correspond to the number of letters in the sender's name. If you can guess who sent the letter, that person owes you a chocolate Easter egg. If you can't guess, you owe them a chocolate Easter Egg whenever they reveal themselves.  Needless to say, gækkebrev are very popular with small children looking for candy.  (The "gække" refers to a vintergække flower that used to accompany the letter back in the day) But the tradition is slowly dying out, thanks to Denmark's widespread digitalization. Paper letters have almost disappeared; it's quite possible to go for months without receiving any physical mail at all.  Stamps and coins are also dying out. While Denmark got a new king more than a year ago, I've yet to see his image on any stamps or coins...because I so rarely see stamps or coins.   Read more at howtoliveindenmark.com.