the danes are a happy people

in a hyperlink world, your progression of thoughts goes something like this...starlene sends you an email citing this quote which came from here:

"Despite not having money, do you still love your life?:  That’s such an American question. Somewhere behind those 10 words is the reason the US continues to linger in the mid-30s of the world happiness index. You know, we get crushed by the Danes in that index every year? -Fucking Danes are so happy! 

The answer is a resounding “sure”. Like most people, I get bummed out a lot, but not about money. I just try to remind myself of my friends, the cool town I live in, and that once in a while I’ll make someone laugh who kinda needed a chuckle. Hell, it’s not Denmark-Euphoria, but most of the time it’s enough.

starlene's path to the quote had started at tangobaby, gone to tangobaby's i live here: SF project blog, then to broke-ass stuart's blog, which led to the link above featuring broke-ass of the week: jeff cleary. and then, all of these links made me go in search of that world happiness index report thingie that the danes come out on top of year after year, so i googled and i found this analysis and this one (featuring a clip on the happiness of danes which was done by 60 minutes) and this one. and naturally, it got me thinking...

actually, every time i see this report of the world happiness index, which the danes have come out on top of for like twenty years, it makes me think. because frankly, i don't think you can tell it by looking at them. you'd expect more overt smuggery (thank you for that word spudballoo) from them, walking around all satisfied and happy like that. but honestly, you don't see it. in fact, if you looked around at the lack of interaction between people (best observed when someone has just run over your foot with their big-ass baby carriage and not apologized) and the no smiling as they walk down the street (especially not at a stranger, ew, shudder at the thought of strangers), you'd actually get the impression that they were quite an unhappy little nation.

starlene asked if it was true that the danes were so happy and i dashed off an answer on my iPhone...one that strangely, in all of my thinking about it over the years, i hadn't actually articulated before. previously, i'd flippantly suggested that it was about low expectations...if you don't expect much, you're pretty satisfied with what you get, right? but there is something more to it than that.

i think it has to do with people feeling generally valued. minimum wage is 120 kroner/hour, which at today's exact exchange rate, which i just ran on XE is $22.41, so even if you're working for minimum wage, you might not go to mallorca for two weeks every summer, but you can live an ok life. (i also think this high minimum wage has to do with why the service culture sucks, but that's the stuff of another post.)

people also feel that their things are valuable. just as an example, our house, which is an ordinary four-bedroom 200m2 house in an ordinary neighborhood and might cost $200,000 in a decent suburb in an american city of similar size, would list for an asking price of $672,000 if we were to put it on the market. this is after the market adjustment that's happened in the past six months. not that i'm saying that people feel happy sitting around converting their real estate to dollars in their heads..it's more a content knowledge that your assets are worth something.

people also feel safe and they trust the people around them. i have to admit that we rarely lock our house and we never lock our car. half the time, i leave the key in the car and our bikes stand out in the bike shed with the keys in their locks (granted i wouldn't do this in the center of copenhagen, but where we live, no problem).

then, there's also that it's a more egalitarian place. there's less hierarchy between jobs. when i first came to denmark more than a decade ago, i remember being struck by the fact that if someone worked in a factory or as a clerk in a store, they didn't seem to have any desire to downplay that. they would openly talk about standing on an assembly line, doing monotonous repetitive work in a positive way that wasn't familiar to me from the US (ok, since i came to denmark straight from the U of C, i might have had a skewed world view, i'll admit). but the fact is that it's a shorter distance from richest to poorest in denmark and there are a whole lotta people in the middle, so people feel equal and worthy of their fellow man.

the danes don't have the baggage of having to live "the american dream," that we as americans are both blessed and cursed with. that's actually one of the things that i was worried about with sabin growing up here...that she wouldn't grow up with the expectation that she could become anything she wanted to be. i no longer feel that way and think she's growing up with a different view on being whatever she wants to be--one that's less competitive and healthier and far more relaxed.

because if anything, i think the danes are quite relaxed. i know that when i go to the US, i feel far more stressed and pushed--to be faster, to do more. here, people work hard, but they leave at 3 p.m. to pick up their kids, spend a few good hours with them between picking them up, dinner and getting them to bed and then get back online and attend to work again after the kids go to bed. they're accustomed to dealing with other time zones and know that it's sometimes necessary to join a conference call across the world at 9 p.m. and they do so without thinking much about it--it's just normal.

because although danes like to come back home and think denmark is the greatest, they are outward-looking and travel a lot. they are informed about what's going on in the world and interested in it. as VEG wrote recently, there are lots of americans who don't even really know where canada is and it's sitting right there on top of them. danes have a remarkable awareness of and interest in the world. and this may make them happy to be back at home in their little country where although there are problems, there's a secure social welfare system and free medical care as well as a good public transport net and safe roads.

just an example of the social welfare system: i keep reading about people in the US who are laid off from one day to the next. that can't happen here. you can be laid off, of course, but the company must continue to pay you for three months if you've been in the job for less than three years. if it's more than three years, they have to pay you another month for every year, so 4 years = 4 months, and so on. this gives you time and breathing room to recover from the shock and find another job before you run completely out of money. and even if you don't find something, there's social welfare to keep you from having to sell off your firstborn child on ebay (tho' you may want to do that some days anyway, depending on the behavior of said child and your level of patience).

while i believe that all of these factors contribute to the danes' general level of happiness (and frankly, i'm  a pretty happy and content person myself, so it does rub off), there are flip sides to it. like a general level of impoliteness and a lack of service culture that i also believe are results of all of this equality.

but for the most part, it's true, denmark is a pretty happy place. just look at that cheerful red and white flag? how could that not make you happy?

those happy danes and one slightly disgruntled guardian reader

recently, the danes topped yet another survey of happiness - this time, one conducted by the UN. the guardian published a piece by a freelance british journalist who lives in copenhagen in order to explain glorify the happiness of the danes (or more accurately of a possibly delusional brit living in denmark). the guardian piece is categorized under news » world news » denmark, but it reads like a blog entry. it's the extremely personal bloggy-style view of one freelance brit journalist with a small child (and even features a photo of said journalist and her child) who happens to live in copenhagen.

while much of what she says is true - denmark is a child- and family-friendly country, design, especially of everyday objects, is awesome and common in every home, and you can swim in the harbor in copenhagen. but (you knew there was a but coming), none of this explains in the least why the danes top out these happiness lists year after year. it explains why cathy strongman, transplanted brit, is happy in denmark. that and they surely slipped her some seriously good drugs when she gave birth to that child because she has a fanciful description of her birth experience that nearly made me spit my coffee all over my keyboard. some tale of a maternity hotel to which she was apparently sent and tended to for three days after the birth of her child. i'm pretty sure the maternity hotel was her own home, and the attending, helpful nurse a drug-addled hallucination, as they're pushing mothers out the door if they can possibly stand and nobody gets coddled in the hospital these days.

i question as well the availability of a bagel in copenhagen as i've never seen one, tho' i grant her that it would likely set you back ten quid if there was such a thing. but perhaps a bagel is different in the mind of a brit than it is in the mind of an american. i think it may just have been a bread roll.

and then no self-respecting danish government institution (like the "local college" (which i'm pretty sure is copenhagen university) she cites) would have eames chairs when they could have arne jakobsen -  danes are loyal to danish design, especially where public funds are concerned.

and as for the well-dressed danes she mentions, i'll bet you anything that if you walked up behind them and listened in, they'd be speaking swedish. she's right that starbucks is (sadly) confined to the airport, but local cafes and shops are not as common as she says, it must be that she just isn't familiar with which brands are ubiquitous in denmark (baresso coffee, all of the bestseller brands of clothing, company's clothing stores, h&m). there are small streets of independent shops but i guarantee they are not paying affordable rents.  and even the cutest of them are packed with the same rice and sia baskets and frames as the one next door.

but the bottom line is that i can't fathom what all of this has to do with the danish position on the big happy list. not that i necessarily have an answer for that either, as i don't think you can necessarily SEE the happiness of the danes on their faces. nor do they go around acting smugly content. in fact, i'd call it a well-concealed inner happiness that apparently manifests itself best when they fill out surveys.

however, the article is worrying in that it's a personal, bloggy-style blog post masquerading as journalism. and as much as i love the blog as a genre, a blog is not a newspaper. newspapers have blogs and should have blogs and this type of article has its place on such a blog. but it didn't belong in the news section of the guardian. and the guardian should know that.

the danish model rears its ugly head

i love the danish model. NOT.

honestly, there are times when i'm less than fond of the danish model. i mean in general, not the union model being referred to in this headline (i just couldn't resist using it, since it fit my ironic mood). even down to the word nydansker - new danes - in the little headline below the big one. that term has, in the past decade, taken on a negative connotation. and really, does anyone expect to be allowed by the old danes to actually become a new dane? i don't think so. the danes are too much of a tribe for that. i could go on and on about this, but today i'm thinking about one aspect of the broader danish model that i'm not that keen on...and that's blind allegiance to bureaucracy.

sabin will move over to what is effectively middle school next year. in connection with this, there is a form we had to fill out. after name, address and social security number, the next questions are "mother tongue" and "land of origin," followed by whether or not danish is spoken in the home. it is unclear how this information will be used.

i wrote to the principal yesterday, expressing worries about the purpose of that information. i said that i hoped that the fact that we speak mostly english in our home wasn't going to be used to discriminate against or exclude my child in any way.

i promptly received the answer that the reason it was there was that the school had to send a report about two-language (tosprogede - another word that's taken on a very negative connotation in danish) students to the municipality every year. she assured me that it was not, under any circumstance, used to discriminate or exclude children - tho' she offered no proof of this and provided no information as to what it was to be used for. she also offered no information as to the municipality's purpose in gathering such information on a yearly basis. i can make some guesses about this, with extra funding being at the top of the list. she further advised me to contact the municipality if i wanted further information.

if you recall, this isn't the first time the school has tried to pigeonhole my child with objectionable questions about the languages she may consider native. in that instance, they were also very poor at explaining the purpose of the questions.

and i've thought a lot about that. and i think the answer is twofold. 1) danes trust blindly in their bureaucracy. if the municipality wants a yearly report of what languages the school age children speak in their homes, then they must have a reason for it, so we'll just provide them with that information without asking or even wondering how it will be used. 2) the danish higher education system does not include a set of general education credits which force students to have at least been exposed to basic rhetoric and argument-building. therefore, the principal of the school thinks she actually answered my questions and concerns, not realizing that "the municipality asks for it" is not an argument and does nothing to persuade me that there are not ulterior motives behind it. nor does her proof-less assurance that the information is not used for discrimination or exclusion. these are not arguments, but i have encountered such statements so many times that i have come to believe that danes believe they are arguments. because they don't know any better. me, however, i'm grateful to the TA who taught my rhetoric course at iowa because what i learned from him is still helping me recognize bad arguments on a daily basis.

danish words for things

these amanitas are a favorite of the danes - they feature heavily in danish christmas decor - on packages, in flower arrangements, on christmas paper, on christmas trees in lovely hand-blown glass versions. leave it to the danes to love a poisonous mushroom. oddly, this predilection got me thinking about danish ways of expressing certain concepts.

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the danish word for superstition is overtro literally "overbelief."  i was once part of a cross-cultural training that got me thinking (here she goes again) about the the way in which culture pervades language. one of the participants asked about chinese superstitions and emphasized the word with a bit of an eye roll, indicating disdain. i haven't run across many superstitions in denmark - in all, it's a pragmatic people with a pragmatic language.

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danish has a marvelous way of expressing whether people have extra energy or not - overskudsmennesker and underskudsmennesker - "surplus people" or "deficit people" if i translate literally. we all know people that fit both descriptions, so it's very apt to have a word to describe it. my partner and i did a book translation and we found english very poor indeed to describe this phenomenon.

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the danish word for immigrant - indvandrer - has become a bit of a swear word in the decade plus i've been here (all over europe and the world nationalistic, quasi-tribal attitudes have arisen and denmark is no exception with the popularity of a right wing "keep denmark for the danes" sort of party). but i actually rather like the word in and of itself. if i literally translate it, "one who wanders in." now that's a concept to which i can relate. if you are an indvandrer, you are also, by definition an udlænding - "one who is from the land out there." i think the way these words are constructed says a lot about the danish attitude towards foreigners. and when it comes down to it, the danes would actually prefer that you wander on back to the land out there. lucky for me, i don't scare easily.

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i'm sure english has weird words for stuff, but none come to mind as i write this. i think it's first outside your own language that you really begin to notice things.

see, not always ranting

far too often, i'm complaining about some aspect of denmark and the danes that i simply cannot understand or appreciate, but not today. today, i'm madly in love. with all of it. that pretty little red and white flag. the copper roofs, the efficient public transportation. even that ridiculously tiny statue of a mermaid (granted, not a misrepresentation, as the word "little" is in her title). i am just loving it.

it's probably spring. it's probably because i'm flying today and flying always makes me happy. it's probably because the trains were totally on time and i was 20 minutes early for my morning meeting. maybe it's because i'm sitting in the gold lounge and they have some really yummy bread and sandwich fixings and english newspapers and a l'avenir chenin blanc from the western cape. maybe it's because i'm gonna get a venti latte at starbucks before i board my plane.

perhaps it's because since i got on the metro to the airport about an hour ago i've heard the following languages: russian, danish, english, portuguese, dutch, swedish, german, japanese and norwegian and i love hearing lots of languages. maybe it's check-in via SMS and then direct bag drop at the gold counter, followed by fast track security which means i'm in the lounge within 2 minutes of arriving at the airport (odin bless you, SAS). maybe it's that the computers for public use in the lounge are, you guessed it, iMacs (odin bless you again, SAS).

maybe it's light, bright, tastefully decorated government offices filled with top end designer furniture (so that's what they're doing with all that tax money). maybe it's unexpectedly realizing that the guy you've got an appointment with is the top guy and he made time for you. cool!

but really, it's because of the extremely pleasant hour and a half i spent discussing the environment with that top guy. i was completely reminded of all of the personality traits i really love about danes. they're so pragmatic and straight-forward. they're honest (as in candid) and logical and have lots of common sense (something i see lacking in my own country of birth whenever i visit--just think of airport security before your hackles raise, my american dahlings). danes are so funny in an ironic, dry way that i adore. and lastly, they don't hesitate to swear for emphasis. they're really, really good at swearing at the right moments to make a point or put you at ease.  and did i mention smart and well-thought out? well-argued?

so today, no ranting about the danes and denmark. just love. mad, spring love.

of handsome men and not so handsome politicians

as you know, i spend a rather inordinate amount of time trying to figure out what makes the danes tick. i have assorted bloggy (and real life) friends who do as well. here's an especially amusing new theory - the theory of the handsome danish men. yesterday, i observed a Handsome Danish Man in action (he was Handsome, just ask him, he'll tell you himself (flips hair fetchingly)). he sauntered around importantly. he flashed smiles at himself when he caught sight of his salt and pepper hair in mirror-like surfaces. he oddly kept calling attention to the fact that he is an embedsmand (non-political government official), which frankly, detracted significantly from his handsomeness, but must have been making him feel important. and it was more than obvious that he feels important as well as Handsome. however, i'm not yet ready to fully buy the theory as in my opinion, it's danish women who exhibit the most appallingly rude behavior in public space. perhaps they're just bitter about being treated badly all those years by the handsome men. i'll have to ponder this new theory a bit more.

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apropos attempting to understand the danes, there was recent swirl in the billund newspapers surrounding a report on quality of life among expats in that municipality. (billund is where the second largest airport in denmark is located and is the home of lego.) apparently one local politician was so incensed that the report was in english that he publicly declared that it was over with addressing politicians in english in the municipality. 

the report is the result of interviews and a workshop with 22 expats living within the municipality (which is more like a county-sized entity in US terms). they had a lot of positive things to say about denmark (it's safe, it's not corrupt, it's a great place to raise children, there is a good work-life balance), but they also expressed a lot of negatives, largely surrounding how hard it is to break down the barriers and establish a social life with danes. people had tears in their eyes as they told tales of feeling rejected by their neighbors and even strangers in line at the grocery store. some were on the verge of clinical depression due to inability to connect or get meaningful work. two said they had actually taken antidepressants. so the overall story was of a pretty harsh reality of daily life as an expat in a place where people felt invisible and rejected. and the people of billund were outraged. how dare foreigners complain about this idyllic little land? they should just pack it up and go back to wherever they came from.

the reaction of the politician, to declare that this is denmark and all municipal business must take place in english simply underlines the results of the report. foreigners feel rejected by danish society. he apparently advocates taking away completely the voice of the minority population within the municipality when he declares in a news story that "it's over with addressing politicians in english." how a grown man who is an elected official in a little land with a minor language can stand up and say out loud that he doesn't speak english is beyond my comprehension. the largest business within the municipality is the very successful toy maker lego. foreign workers are essential to their continued growth and success, so to deny these people, who bring jobs and money into the community, a voice is absolutely absurd. the politician actually said, "i wasn't there on the day we had english in school," so he further negates the importance of english in a globalized world. happily, there is an election coming up this autumn and foreign residents of a municipality are allowed to vote in municipal elections (at least for now, tho' the xenophobic danish people's party would like to take that away), so perhaps this clown will be shown the door and replaced by someone with a more global view. 

another interesting side note - in three articles about the report, the reporter in question never once made an attempt to contact the authors of the report for more information on methodology or the results or to have a more nuanced view on the story. and this despite declaring in a sidebar that they will spend the next week looking in depth at the contents of the report. and that's journalism today, folks.

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and speaking of danish politicians, i spent yesterday with several of them. i sat down next to one of them at lunch, a heavily pockmarked older man with a shaggy and decidedly non-hipster 70s mustache and a dried sweat stain on the back of his shirt. he didn't ask me my name or tell me his (perhaps assuming i knew he was An Important City Council Member). instead, apropos one of my uncles at a family reunion, basically asked me what i did with myself to deserve the air i was using up. when i explained that i do all kinds of writing and communications in english, he asked if i was english. on the principle of not offering more than you're asked, i said no. what i should have done next was ask him what he did with himself to deserve the air he was using up. instead, i just sort of gulped and fumed a little bit about being made to feel inadequate by this unfashionable-shoe wearing git. it then came out that i was american. and where i lived. and that was that.

sometime later, as we toured a library, he asked me how long i'd been in denmark. i said 15 years and he said, "oh, well, you're danish then." i replied that i most decidedly was NOT. (funny how we're most our nationality in defensive situations.) and he asked, incredulous, why. i pointed out that i have an american passport (i've heard those are quite sought after) and why on earth would i give that up? (he'd ticked me off by then.) he said, oh, but you can have both. and i said, no, i can't. the americans would allow it, but the danes won't. even the former prime minister's own son had to give up his danish passport when he became an american citizen a few years ago. this guy should have known that, since he is from that same party!

i'm sure he's pondering ways of trying to get me thrown off the local group which is involved in establishing a "culture house," on the grounds that i'm a bad foreign influence. he probably doesn't realize that i get to vote in municipal elections. and i know who i'm not going to be voting for.  he also speaks a bit against the handsome danish men theory, as he was most decidedly not handsome (i have a photo of him, but i don't dare to publish it). but again, i'm not done pondering that one.

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monty python and the holy grail lego sets. awesome.

rainy day ponderings

early mornings like a painting. the rest of the day, one wonders if one probably shouldn't have gotten to work on that ark. the wind yesterday was crazy, whipping leaves and loose branches from the trees - leaving the road strewn with debris and husband's half-finished sawmill a bit in disarray. today, there's just steady rain, but not so much wind. and we battened down the hatches of the sawmill, so it will be ok.

after a busy few weeks, things have slowed down a bit. i'm writing proposals and developing new ideas. and even writing a press release for my local photo walk that's a part of scott kelby's worldwide photo walk october 13! it's interesting, getting used to the rhythms.

i'm participating in stephanie levy's creative courage course. it just started yesterday and already it makes me feel both peaceful and purposeful. there's a link to it on the sidebar if you're interested, i think it's not too late to join in. i haven't been making anything lately and i can feel that's not a good thing. why is it that the creativity (actual physical creativity) is always the first thing to go when i get busy? i know that's bad for me and yet i let it happen.

the first exercise in the creative courage course asked us to write down what we'd like to create in the coming weeks and what we'd like to release. we should actually physically get rid of the piece of paper with the things we'd like to release...a sort of symbolic release of the words. i think these are powerful acts. and while i haven't done it yet (i'm still pondering and wondering if i can fit everything on one piece of paper), i will. i think i'll burn up that piece of paper when i'm done - what more cleansing way to release than fire? tho' i have an image in my head of a rain-spattered piece of paper as well, with the ink rinsing away. goodness knows we've got plenty of rain.

one of the things i want to release is negativity - yesterday, i ended up coming across several articles (i will admit to a certain fondness for the phrase rugbrød fascists) and blogs about expats living in denmark who were very unhappy and after reading them a bit too long, i found myself feeling negative and unhappy as well. and tho' some of what i read rings true, not all of it does. and even tho' i do occasionally despair that i will ever understand the danes, largely, i like it here and it definitely doesn't do me any good to read a bunch of arrogant, bilious ranting from someone who doesn't.

what's interesting is that one of the proposals i'm working on is for a program which helps alleviate some of the things described on that blog, tho' i do have my doubts whether danes will ever behave nicely in a queuing situation. and i have little hope for my little troglodyte buddy (who behaved even more abominably than ever last evening). i do think there's hope in other ways.

~  *  ~

do you have a method of physically getting rid of the negatives in your life?

do you burn or rip up or bury or scribble them out or release them on the wind?

jarring transitions

i started my morning in barcelona. it was sunny and a lovely 18 degrees. there were several thousand madmen and -women running a marathon through its streets. a number of hours later, i landed in oslo, where it is -3 and snowing like mad. only when you fly do experience such jarring transitions. i'm not sure it's good for us, as human beings. how can we catch up with ourselves when the differences are so great?

lucky for me, i'm at the most lovely old hotel up on holmenkollen, sitting in the pretty, quiet lobby, all alone by a fireplace, so i have the peace and solitude in which to make the mental transition to match the geographical transition i made. one doesn't always get that chance, so i'm making a conscious effort to savor it.

the difference in culture between denmark and spain is quite striking as well and was another jarring transition. we noticed it already on the plane, leaving copenhagen. it was a spanair flight and full of spaniards. a bunch of them evidentally knew one another and they were talking loudly across the aisles to one another. they spent long stretches of the flight, standing up talking to their friends, sometimes several rows behind them. speaking quickly and loudly. it was strange for the danes onboard, who never speak in public unless they have to or are together with close friends who they've known since birth. it was really interesting that the cultural differences were so evident already there.

when you travel, at least when you travel for pleasure, you open yourself to the differences. i go into observation mode and try to take note of such things...like the rhythms of the language and the body language of the people. even there, already on the plane, it was evident that the entire rhythm of barcelona was going to be different than copenhagen. the pulse and the beat on the streets was more lively and immediate somehow. less reserved. part of it is simply that there are so many more people, but it must also have to do with language and the actual music of the language itself. people simply express themselves completely differently.

we noticed that there were danes everywhere we went in barcelona. and they seemed to be caught up in the pulse and the liveliness as well, as they too were more animated. they were talking louder and using their arms more as they spoke. so something in the spanish culture was catching. or maybe it was just the sunshine and the warmth.

and now, i transition back to the cooler northern climes as big flakes of snow fall outside and the fire crackles beside me. transitions aren't all bad.

et småligt land

these days, there are many refugees on the move throughout europe. leaving their war-torn homes in syria and iraq, coming ashore in barely seaworthy boats on greek islands, getting on trains or trucks, or failing that, walking their way up through europe. they're trying to get to germany and sweden, which are the main european countries standing up and taking responsibility, opening their doors, their stadiums and hearts. meanwhile, the minority, xenophobic and apparently tone deaf danish government took out ads in newspapers in the middle east, discouraging people from coming to denmark. this means that the hundreds of people who need to cross denmark to get to sweden are being stopped at the borders these days. yesterday, several hundred of them walked along the motorway and it had to be closed at one point for their safety. some danes form "welcome" committees on the overpasses, spitting down on the refugees and screaming obscenities in broken english. these are shameful, dark times.

last night, instead of standing up and taking any responsibility, the danish prime minister, lars løkke rasmussen, apparently went to a wine tasting. the police, overwhelmed with people at the borders, have elected to stop trying to register those who don't wish to seek asylum in denmark and just let them go on through to sweden. yesterday, they were stopping them, but the numbers are too large for that now and taking people off trains and buses to forcibly register them was only creating chaos and large crowds of people walking on the motorways.

for all of my complaints, i do love living in denmark and i love many things about it, including the welfare state which allows people to get back on their feet when they're down. but this makes me (and a whole lot of danes) sad and embarrassed and ashamed. and it's the direct result of years and years of heightened xenophobic rhetoric. and now the whole world is watching and it's not a pretty sight.

on expatriation and culture and landing in the mid-atlantic

some of the projects we have in the pipeline have me thinking about how shaped by culture, one's own and the one in which one finds oneself, we are. defined. how it locks us in boxes and leaves us feeling superior (or inferior) because of it. and how mind-numbingly LIMITING that all is...on both sides.

i stumbled across a blog written by an american who made the move to sweden. it's on sweden.se, a cool site that the swedish institute runs in english - all about living in sweden (wish denmark would have had such a thing back when the internet was in its infancy and i moved here). it got me thinking about all those things that i thought were so alien when i first moved to denmark. some of them still puzzle me, but i've actually gotten used to a lot in the 14-ish years i've been here.

~ i remember my first time in a grocery store, scrambling as i realized there was no one there to pack my groceries and not only did i have to do it myself, i had to PAY for the bag to put it in!

~ when i arrived in denmark in the late 90s, mobile phones were still rather a luxury item in the us - mostly doctors and other important people had them, people with their own cars. i remember being shocked to see people on the bus talking on their mobile phone. if you could afford a phone, what on earth were you doing on public transportation? (i had a lot to learn, both about public transportation and about mobile phones.)

~ the sight of a man in a suit, riding a bicycle and smoking a cigarette. in my mind, a bicycle was for exercise, not necessary transport, and who would smoke or wear a suit while exercising?

~ people treating cemeteries as parks, laying out in their bra and underwear in the first rays of spring sunshine on a towel with their bike leaned up against h.c. andersen's grave, catching some rays and drinking a beer.

~ public nudity. this one was technically in sweden, but as the ferry pulled into landskrona, there was a row of colorful little houses along the waterfront and a bunch of naked swedes were jumping in and out of the water from the doorways of the little bathing houses.

~ no one ever holding a door open for you if you were coming along behind them. it got so bad, i thought that they were actually waiting to strategically drop it in my face for the most profound rudeness effect. later, i realized that many danes, if they didn't meet you when they went to kindergarten with you, actually lack the ability to see you at all. it's kind of a like you're wearing an invisibility cloak.  this is one of those things i never get used to, it still surprises me and sometimes even hurts my feelings - i just can't help it.

~ signs with the word "fart" on them. in an elevator: i fart. along the roadside: fart kontrol. i thought the danes were obsessed with flatulence and i thought they were pretty darn organized to think they could control it. but it turned out to mean motion or speed - so the elevator was in motion when the i fart sign was lit. and the fart kontrol was a friendly warning that a cop (or just an unmanned van or camera) with radar was just ahead, so you'd better stop driving like a maniac.

* * *

speaking of expats in denmark, i made a new blog friend!

* * *

and speaking of denmark.
film is a powerful medium.

* * *

you have to see what kit lane made of the lila hairball we gave her.
utterly fabulous.

books as yet unwritten

a couple of books on denmark by expats (i know, we're not supposed to use that word anymore, thanks to its colonial, possibly racist overtones) have come out recently -  a year of living danishly and the danish way of parenting . both are getting quite a lot of press. and it makes me regret that i've not written more than a string of blog posts in my feeble attempts to understand the danes. however, i think there are still other books to be written. in fact, right now, as we speak, i'm plotting one on the danes' uncanny and impressive ability to drink exactly the right amount to maintain the perfect buzz for 12 hours straight (it's how they get through christmas). i can surely do much better than you suck at drinking, tho' you have to admire a book that advises exactly how much to drink at a children's party...

when the storm clouds lift

i have been a storm cloud all day. it's one of those days where everything just feels aggravating. it's not that anything exactly is wrong, it just that it feels frustrating and pointless. it's surely more a symptom of SAD more than PMS and the grey, grey day didn't help. it also didn't help that the car was making a strange rattling sound. 

but things are beginning to look up. that rattling was just a non-essential piece that had rusted itself loose. we've ordered a new one and i can drive it in the meantime. sabin's class is doing a nativity scene this evening and we'll eat æbleskiver and glögg. and then i got a sweet mail from a new friend who works at the farm where molly came from in minnesota. in it, she asked me what i love about living in denmark. and that really helped. because i wasn't feeling much in love with anything today.

so, things i currently love about denmark:

~ that knowing danish gives you at least some ability to understand swedish, norwegian, dutch and german. at least the written bits.

~ the daily show on only one day's delay.

~ that it's not that long 'til the solstice and the light begins to return.

~ great drama. 

~ that a new julekalendar starts on saturday. (that's a christmas program that airs a new episode every day 'til christmas).

~ that the danes think christmas is on the 24th. this normally bugs the hell out of me, but this time, i'm looking on it as hey, two christmas meals!

~ going to sabin's christmas program and laughing with some of the other parents.

~ P1 - denmark's answer to NPR, only even better.

~ ny nordisk mad (new nordic food).

so a big thank you to jessica for shining a little light of positivity on my afternoon. i really needed that.

* * *

this is great - a lioness photographs her own poo with a canon dslr.

* * *

BBC radio 4 podcast on øresundsbroen.

i love how the professor says that lund university was built to swedify (read: civilize) the danes.

* * *

articles on the new feminism keep cropping up. this time, about crafting.

and tho' i think the writing is absolute crap in that piece, there are some interesting things to ponder.

* * *

the l boards on pinterest: ladders, lego my lego, let's play (this is work-related), looks interesting (mostly stuff to read with the occasional film), lysthus (my coming backyard refuge).

a tweet will take you pretty far

© photo credit us embassy denmark via this tweet.

probably the coolest thing that came out of my TEDx Copenhagen experience happened the day after.

but first, i have to back up a little bit. during the afternoon break at TED, i was standing in the long line for coffee. i tried to break into the conversation the two guys in front of me were having with some or other funny remark. i was rebuffed completely. so, feeling fed up with the way that danes often are unwilling to talk to people they didn't go to kindergarten with, i tweeted, Dear Danes, you suck at talking to people you don't know. #tedxcph. almost immediately, @TEDxCopenhagen tweeted back that i just needed to keep trying. i answered them that i had seriously only talked to fellow ex-pats that day and wrote in danish that i even spoke danish, so i didn't get it. i saw a few retweets and favorites of my tweet before my phone ran out of battery and gave up the ghost.

i didn't really think anymore of it until i got home that evening and plugged the phone in and got it charged up. there were a whole lot of retweets (more than the 4 that show when i click the tweet, which is weird) and a lot of answers to it. and people weren't mad at me either, they admitted it was true and that it was sad and that we should do something about it.

but it got even more exciting when i checked my mail, where i had an email from a radio journalist who wanted to interview me on the air on friday on a national talk radio station about the tweet. it also happened that the new us ambassador to denmark, rufus gifford, would be in the studio as well, so they thought it would be fun if i gave him advice about living in denmark, since i'd been living here for 15 years. i couldn't say no to that. so on friday afternoon, i found myself giving the following advice to obama's top fundraiser:

~ book a holiday somewhere warm and sunny in january, because it gets really dark here then.
~ buy a bike and ride it.
~ visit all of denmark, because there's a lot going on, even over here on the mainland. in fact, the top three richest people in the country all live in my geographical area.

it also didn't hurt that the ambassador was a bit of a hottie (as is the journalist for that matter).

and tho' i'd rather gone off twitter, it kinda restored my faith in it as a happening place. and it goes to show that just a little tweet will get you pretty far. so get out there and start tweeting!

word for the day: solipsism

solipsistic. that's the word i would choose as the predominant descriptor of the danes. it's a word i first encountered in college, as applied to dostoevsky's underground man, a character so utterly fixated on himself that he cannot function in the world. or even see it. while the danes are solipsistic in a different way than the underground man (he's quite absorbed in philosophy and existential questions), they are self-absorbed nonetheless, to the point of often not realizing that others exist.

this manifests most often in public space. drivers stick to the middle of the road, seemingly unaware that there are other cars coming towards them. someone backs out of their space in a crowded grocery store parking lot, blissfully oblivious to the existence of other cars and people and carts bustling around them.  the same is true inside the grocery store, where they look up in annoyed surprise when they run over your foot, wondering where on earth you materialized from and without a polite apology ever leaving their lips. this solipsism is the same force that made countless grown adults walk on, not saying a word, as a young boy was pummeled on the street in broad daylight. a sense of being so much in and of oneself, that no one else is needed and therefore there's no need to help or acknowledge others.

it's one of the most bewildering and infuriating things about living in denmark. and i never really get used to it, tho' i am sure that i have to an extent taken on the behavior myself - grown colder and more closed and abrupt. it makes me sad to think of it at times, but it's also exhausting to try to fight it.

interesting, i had what i thought was a funny rant about this in my head when i sat down to write this, but it came out much more sad than i imagined. writing is like that sometimes.

~~~

i don't read a word of french, but if you like stitching, there is some serious eye candy here.

just another surreal evening with the brainiacs

husband's aunt is about to publish a dictionary. it's a swedish-danish dictionary. and thus far has 25,000+ entries. she's been working on it for ten years. and it's being released online. and she's in her late 70s. i think that's all pretty cool. she had a dinner party last evening to celebrate its impending release.

to say this aunt is eccentric is a major understatement, but it is in the most charming, wonderful way. the family stories of strange meals they've been served by her are the stuff of legend. odd sauces made with eggs, pasta fried in a pan (without boiling first), so i didn't really know what to expect.  what we got were landgangsbrød sandwiches.

it's a slice of bread cut the long way of the loaf. there were lots of different toppings to put on it...shrimp and avocado, swedish leverpostej (much more flavorful than danish--sorry danes), a mix involving salmon caviar and something creamy and i think onions, some kind of sardine mixture (you can tell i really went for that one) and cheese. you then are supposed to pick it up and eat it from one end to the other. apparently down at husband's end of the table, the creamy caviar dish was mixed with a black caviar, which colored off rather purple on the creamy bit. i didn't try, nor even see that one.

she lives in a strangely laid-out apartment in a really fabulous neighborhood in copenhagen--really in the center, right between nyhavn and the royal theatre. the location couldn't be better. it appeared, however, that she needed to cross the common hallway which leads to the other apartments in order to get to her bedroom, but i didn't explore THAT closely.

the woman i sat next to at dinner was quite amusing. she'd been a language teacher for years and we were speaking danish for the first hour or so of the party. then she turned to me and said, "like many foreign speakers of danish, you have trouble with the vowels." well, duh. we don't have ø æ å in english and we generally like our vowels not to sound like we have a hairball or major amounts of phlegm caught in our throats. tell me something i don't know.

soon after that, because the swedish guy on the other side of me joined our conversation, we switched to english. i'm sorry, i just can't understand swedish (or norwegian). i know it disappoints swedes and norwegians and probably danes, but i can't just understand because i know danish. that's how it is. at least for me.

the woman beside me was even more precise in her pronunciation and english vocabulary and rather haughtily told me at one point that the english taught in danish schools is british english, not american. i pointed out that that was all well and good, but the majority of english everyone in denmark is exposed to via t.v. and movies is american english. so there.

but it was actually a really nice evening. to sit around a table in a room lined from floor to ceiling with books on the two major walls is never a bad thing. the people were interesting and i had tons of interesting conversations on topics as diverse as:

• hull coatings (there's been a lot of that this week)
• the historical nature of fame vs. the nature of fame today
• danish sculptor torvaldsen
• elaborate funerals in the 19th century
• how much enjoyment one can get from tattoos
• cold ironing (it's not forgetting to turn on the iron, it's plugging a ship into shore-based power while it's in port in order to reduce emissions while moored in populated urban areas)
• my late father-in-law (several of the older ladies there had apparently been quite smitten with him over the years)
• the danish television series sommer
• babies and the proper spelling of thomas
• upcoming productions at various theatres
• the gang from the old days in nivå (i wasn't there, but now i feel like i was)
• norwegians who sail into the swedish archipelago and drink too much and make noise all summer long 

husband was down at the other end of the table and had a long conversation with a woman who was apparently associated with a mental hospital. it was only towards the end of the conversation that it began to dawn on him that she didn't work there, but was apparently a patient there, who had been released for the party. 

and we only went home after sabin had played so hard with this little boy that he fell asleep on the floor.

in all a lovely way to spend a friday evening. 

now if i could just find my rock. it seems to have gone missing. it's got to be here somewhere, i just don't quite know where.

raw lunch and artistic globes

yesterday, i spent the day wandering around copenhagen with miss buckle, who is in town, attending events surrounding the COP 15 UN meeting on climate change that's happening in copenhagen right now. copenhagen is full of people speaking other languages and even the danes (which are few, since all of the people in shops and restaurants are swedes these days) in all of the shops in copenhagen seem to have forgotten to speak danish.

in the interest of kindness to the environment (and of course being healthy), we started off our wander with lunch (as one does) at a new raw food restaurant in the heart of copenhagen. it's called 42°RAW. i'd been wanting to try a raw restaurant since buying charlie trotter's raw "cook"book several years ago, but could never convince anyone to go to one with me. to my knowledge, there wasn't a raw restaurant in copenhagen before this one opened anyway. we really enjoyed the food. i had a brilliant salad with beets, seaweed and a horseradish dressing and miss buckle's pumpkin salad was loaded with pumpkin seeds and salty olives (we did wonder how raw they were, but we were cool with being eased into the concept). and the pumpkin on her salad was just a gorgeous, vibrant orange. we ordered fresh juices to go with our salads - mine was carrot, apple and ginger and hers was beet apple and ginger and they were just great. the restaurant also serves coffee (not that raw, i think), but we waited to get coffees later. we really loved the experience and i will definitely be dragging husband back there to show him that the occasional raw meal can be a good thing. after our tummies were filled, we began to wander in search of interesting people and things.

some of my favorites were these art globes displayed around kongs nytorv.

this one was my favorite.

i'm a sucker for colors, what can i say?

i liked how graffiti-style writing was used on this one.

this one highlighted the butterflies.

check out the police and uniformed military in the background.

this one advocated wearing a sweater rather than turning up the heat.

this one wanted us to drive less.

there were many more and they were all thought provoking. but my favorite was that at the base of each one was this sign:

it was pretty surprising to me that the shops didn't seem to have taken the opportunity to have an environmental theme to their window displays. they just seemed to be selling the same old christmas excess. i found that a little disappointing. but at least in this shot, you can see a bit of me and miss buckle.

at least the posh illum's bolighus had a bit of a nature theme going on, even if it was mostly just stumps on which to display the expensive designer items:

we saw quite a lot of police around on the streets, usually standing together with members of the home guards (hjemmeværn) in military uniform. we even overheard one conversation where they were calling in a report of a homemade sign on the side of a building. as miss buckle said, "if only they'd had their sign professionally done..." apparently the danes' aesthetic sensibilities are quite insulted by hand lettered signs and the public had to be protected.

i've got much more to share, but i'll leave it for another post.

what is danishness?

today's (yesterday's?) jyllands posten (you may remember them from a certain set of mohammed cartoons) had an article about a study suggesting that danes think the biggest problem with foreigners is that they don't understand and embrace danish values. i wouldn't have known about the article, not being a reader of jyllands posten, but i was contacted by my radio crush to be part of a radio program about the article this evening.

so i dashed into 7-11 and bought their last copy of the paper, which oddly, they had hidden in a back room, and i prepared for the program. what struck me about the article was that it was unclear what these danish values that we foreigners apparently reject are. that was completely unstated in the survey where people had come up with that answer and it wasn't until halfway through the second article about it, on page 6, that a list of values even was mentioned. they included things like democracy, equality, valuing work and the vague "personal freedom." those strike me as pretty universal and not exactly uniquely danish. western, perhaps or even protestant, but difficult to narrow down to a particular nationality.

after talking with the journalist, i decided to think about danishness instead and see if some values fell out of that. what are the things that strike me as so danish after all these years? a lot of workplace behaviors came to mind - like the fact that it's ok to have a conversation with the boss and to even grill him (and i do mean him, since that whole equality thing isn't as pervasive as they might like it to seem) a little bit during that conversation, regardless of your position in the firm. i've not really seen that outside of denmark. leaving at 3 p.m. to pick up your kids and having no one look askance at you. wearing a kind of monochrome (read: black) uniform for most of the year, outside of a few wild weeks of summer, where everyone breaks out the summer wardrobe they purchased back in the late 80s and which never wore out, due to the limited use it's had, and embraces a kind of retro madness during the warm weather. and then there's the full calendars which quash all hope of spontaneity because you need to book someone for a dinner party at least two months ahead, even tho' you have no idea if you'll be in the mood to have people over for dinner two months from now.  and then there's the design thing - it's important to have the right lamps (PH) and chairs (Arne Jacobsen) and couch (Borge Mortensen) and table (Piet Hein) (see, i even had so much respect i capitalized their names). of course, that design thing creates a uniformity in homes, that while it's in good taste, ends up quite sterile, impersonal and, dare i say it...boring. (yes, i dared to say it, tho' i myself have Hans Wegner and Kaare Klint chairs and some Tom Rossou lamps, plus the fabulous Triplex lamp). (i wonder if that means i'm integrated?)

and this sameness in design principles and clothing got me thinking about that supposed value of "personal freedom." if there were really personal freedom, we'd have the space in which to choose other chairs and lamps and you'd see more variety in the clothing shops (there's a great deal of black, i can tell you). so i wonder how much personal freedom there actually is. there is, of course, personal freedom in terms of one's right to be gay or to have an abortion and those are important things, but again, they are true many places and aren't uniquely danish.

so i'm still wondering what these danish values are that we foreigners are so reluctant to adopt...and why it's such a source of worry for the danes. perhaps if they got better at communicating and outwardly sharing their real, core values (and not just a bunch of stuff that could be from a UN pamphlet), we'd have an easier time adapting to them.

telling stories, weaving meaning and figuring out why the danes are so darn happy

my computer has been acting up for more than a week now, which is why i've been so absent again. this weekend, i gave it a thorough vacuuming, upgraded my smc fan control and it seems to be behaving like its old self again. i made sure it's backing up, as i do fear it's on its last legs. it's been a good iMac and it has served me very well. i hope to get some more time out of it, but i guess we'll see. computers aren't made to last forever, after all and those shiny new iMacs look pretty cool.

i'm down with my first flu of the season. i've got a headache that won't quit, a low grade fever and aches in all of my muscles. it really rather fits with the grey, dreary weather we've been having and if one must be sick, it may as well be in these dark, rainy days. there's no better time to curl up in bed with a book and a cat or to listen to the serial podcast again from the beginning. (seriously, if you're not listening to serial, you're really missing out, there's even a reddit where people are discussing it endlessly obsessively.)

serial feels to me like it's somehow reviving storytelling or retrieving it from the trite hollywood ending kind of storytelling that we've become so accustomed to. and i know that serial isn't the only place where a great story is being told slowly...there are spoken word festivals and other great story events/podcasts (like the moth), but it's such a sensation that it feels like it's moving us in a good new direction with stories. something sort of akin to the slow food movement, slowing down and enjoying the process, whether it's of a story or a dish.

apropos stories, at drink & draw on saturday evening, we got to talking about that whole thing with the danes being the happiest people on earth. and we talked about ways of drawing out people's happiness stories, since we did agree that all that happiness isn't necessarily visible to the naked eye. and i think that maybe investigating the happiness and talking to a whole lot of people, in a kind of a slow storytelling way ala serial just might be the ticket.  slowly gathering all of those individual happinesses of different colors and gathering (weaving?) them in a whole carpet of happiness (i had to make that photo go with this post in the end) sounds like a pretty good idea for a project, doesn't it?

a day in the life of the world's happiest people starts at home

a few of us from the drink & draw group got to talking about this whole notion of denmark as home of the world's happiest people. i still maintain that if the danes are so happy, you definitely can't see it on them. even my fellow drink & draw-ers are a bit provoked by the whole notion and they are danish! so, we are putting together a project where we are going to ask a wide variety of people of all ages, backgrounds and from all over the country, to keep a diary for a day (all of them on the same day). we will collect the diary entries and see if they shed some light on what it is that makes the danes so darn happy. we don't want it to be a scientific, clinical look, we want it to be personal and intimate. our intention is that then we will invite a variety of artists - painters, actors, storytellers, filmmakers, playwrights, sculptors, whatever - to gather and give creative expression to the diaries. in my head, there's definitely a podcast in it, undoubtedly with multiple episodes. i think that also in my head is something along the lines of the wonderful and profound humans of new york - with short, poignant stories that tell so much about the culture at large. but i'm also trying to reserve judgement and remain open, because once we have the diaries in hand, they may point us in another direction entirely and i want to be able to move in that direction.

yesterday, we all tried the task on for size ourselves. we figured we should feel it under our own skin if we were going to ask people to do it. we agreed that we would write it all out - good and bad and try not to hide anything. we have shared our diaries with one another and will get together next friday and talk about the next steps in our project.

i wrote my day on my marquee blog (see sidebar if you're interested), but i also did some much-needed art journaling to go along with it.  i think i needed both the linear timeline side of things and something more abstract and creative. and i can definitely tell that i needed those moments of creativity and the different sort of concentration that accompanies them. in fact, i've continued them today and they helped me settle down and get back to work again. they quieted some of yesterday's restlessness. i also thought it was quite wonderful that i came across the quote in the one on the bottom while paging through an old magazine, looking for collage materials. it's a bit uncanny how you often come across the thing you most need to hear at precisely the moment you need it.

i realize once again, working on this, that i'm happiest when i'm setting an idea out in the world and seeing what becomes of it. i can't wait to see where this will take us, but i'm also definitely enjoying the place it's helped me occupy right here and now. and to be bringing this to life with a group of awesome and creative women is pretty magical as well.

recovery time

as i get older, it seems to take me more and more time to recover from the big events. back at the end of november, i gave my notice at my job after a tumultuous almost two years of working during a pandemic in a branch that experienced exponential growth because people were sitting at home, working and homeschooling from their kitchens and thinking, "damn, i need a new kitchen." that resulted in a lot of crazy mad ambitious projects that were legitimately "business critical," (though i hate buzzwords like that). 

it was fun and i had really great colleagues, but it was also really intense and hard and in the autumn, i fell prey to the thoughts that many people are having these days...is this really what i want to be doing? do i want to write about black friday deals and affordable prices for the rest of my career? i am approaching an age where i have to think about these things. because soon it will get more difficult for me to switch jobs. even though age is just a number. and with basically 0% unemployment (ok, it's 2.8%, but that might as well be 0%), things aren't that bad. yet. but still, it gave me pause. 

i'd been courted by a headhunter since the summer holiday and i'd turned them down once, but they approached me again in the autumn as fatigue set in. a very big project was dragging out, a boss that went down with stress, tried to come back, couldn't accept the changes that happened in his absence and then left, leaving that very big project in one giant mess and with no one at the helm, made me say yes the second time around. 

but before i said yes, i had a day with the new team, basically interviewing them. it's that kind of job market these days. and i really liked them and it felt like the right thing to do, so i said yes. but i agreed to give my old job an extra month (in denmark, you tend to give you notice at the end of one month and you finish at the end of the next one). i owed that to those good colleagues and we'd been through so much together. and i also felt that i'd poured so much work and caring (i always care too much a great deal) and thought and sweat and tears into the project, that i wanted to leave it at a milestone, rather than just leaving in the middle of everything.

and hit that milestone we did. confetti canons and all. and i felt grateful and privileged to have worked so hard with such a group of talented people. and although i've gone on to that new job with an undoubtedly talented new group of people, damn, i miss them. we went through the hellfire together. we laughed, we swore (some more than others...and by we i mean me), we inspired one another, we leaned on one another, on occasion we had a few too many drinks, we got mad, we yelled, some of us mansplained (you know who you are), then we made up and got over it and got to work again. and it was special and awesome and although i chose it myself, i'm sad it's over. and i miss them so much. 

and it all makes me realize that it's possible to be sad and happy at the same time. i'm excited about what's ahead and so happy to get to know a whole new group of colleagues, but the transition is hard. you don't just get over such an intense period of work in a day. and you have doubts and grief over losing the daily contact with those you shared it all with. guys, you will all have a very special place in my heart. and there will always be a g&t waiting for you if you drop by. but be sure you wear a t-rex or guy riding a chicken costume, because damned if you aren't going to end up on tiktok with me. that's the only way we're going to recover from this...as the danes say (and you're all danes), "you only have the fun you make yourself." i had a lot of fun with you and it was a privilege. thank you all. 

here's to brighter days ahead. 🥂✨ 

we will recover from this, it will just take a little time. so let's give ourselves that time.