How to Live in Denmark – Details, episodes & analysis

November always seems like the rainiest of Danish months, but it isn't, actually. October is. But November feels rainier, because the sky is so grey, and it gets dark so early, and the rain sometimes comes down in little freezing pellets.

Denmark is a watery country, not just its long coastline and many rivers and lakes, but also the fact it is mostly near sea level. Like the Netherlands nearby, it is extremely vulnerable to flooding.

Climate changes in recent decades have made it worse, and sudden cloudbursts – or skybrud– cause a lot of damage.

So retrofitting Denmark for even more water in the future has become a national obsession.

One popular solution: opening up previously buried rivers and streams, particularly those that were paved over with concrete. 

This "daylighting" of buried waterways allows them to collect excess water from storms, and beautifies cities as well. 

This is the most recent episode in our 12-part series, The Danish Year.  

Election posters are a colorful part of democracy in Denmark. In October, the campaigns swing into gear, and when the whistle blows on a set date at precisely noon, teams of poster-hangers cover the country with the faces of their candidates. It's highly competitive; It's against the law to take down posters once they're hung, so there's a big rush to get your party's poster up first.

So on that October afternoon, you'll see teams of young people rushing about Copenhagen, Aarhus, and countryside towns with ladders, and hardback posters, and zip ties, and measuring sticks, because all posters must be at least one-and-a-half meters below power lines.

There are a lot of young people available to do this because most Danish parties have a youth wing. There are also a lot of young candidates.

You'll often see the candidates themselves putting up posters with their own face on them.

Danish design in election posters

In a country famous for great design, Danish election posters are surprisingly uniform.

Every poster features one smiling face, a name, and a party color — and that's it.

No slogans, no promises, no policies. What does each candidate stand for? You'll have to look it up yourself.

With 13 national political parties (and many more local ones), democracy in Denmark gives voters plenty of choices.

Many Danes use online tools and quizzes to find the party that matches their beliefs before they vote.

Democracy in Denmark: Expats can vote

Foreigners can take part in democracy in Denmark at least at the local level. If you're an EU or UK citizen — or a non-EU citizen who has lived in a Danish municipality for at least four consecutive years — you can vote in local elections just like Danish citizens.

In Copenhagen, foreign residents make up around 15% of the potential voter base, though only a small share actually turn out on election day. To reach them, some Danish political parties take part in debates in English, hoping to win over international voters.

It's an interesting contrast in Danish politics: while some leaders actively court the foreign vote, others continue to promote stricter immigration policies.

That mix is part of what makes democracy in Denmark so unique — open, practical, and sometimes a little contradictory.

If you're one of the bottom 80% of Danish earners, you'll probably spend most of your dark January evenings and weekends at home, hoping your bank account can recover from Christmas excesses. Restaurants have a lot of empty tables this time of year. Shops mostly process the return of unwanted Christmas presents.

Now, this can and often is packaged as hygge. Candles, TV, sweaters, warm slippers, hot tea. But it's often just being broke and not being able to go anywhere.

Yet if you're part of the top 20% of earners in Denmark, however, maybe even the top 10%, you go skiing. Not in Denmark, which doesn't have any mountains for downhill skiing, or enough snow for cross-country skiing.

You go to Sweden for cheap skiing, Norway for slightly more expensive skiing, or to France or Switzerland for luxury skiing where you can show off your Rolex Explorer wristwatch on the slopes.

Two different types of Januaries

The two different types of Januaries illustrate how the gap between the rich and poor in Denmark has widened in recent decades. 

Denmark is still, culturally, an egalitarian culture, and it's still considered bad taste to show off your Rolex watch here in Denmark, but there's no debating that as the country has become prosperous over the past 30 years, the gap between rich and poor has widened.

Read more at howtoliveindenmark.com. 

Have you ever seen the movie The Wizard of Oz?  It's a classic.  When Dorothy arrives in the land of Oz, the first thing she's asked is - are you a good witch, or a bad witch?

I was having lunch with a friend this week, and, over club sandwiches she said, its a shame there's only one word for foreigner in Danish, when actually there's two types of foreigner here.

I got her point, even though I think there's only one word for foreigner in most languages.  But what she's was really saying is, there's no single way in Danish to say,  Are you a good foreigner, or a bad foreigner?

If you've been to Danish dinner parties, often later on in the evening, whenever a fair amount of wine has been consumed, you'll hear a Danish person complaining about foreigners in Denmark.  They come here just to take advantage of the our system.  All they want is free education, free health care and welfare payments.  They don't contribute to Danish society at all. And then, at some point, someone will turn to you and say, Oh, but we don't mean your kind of foreigner.

You know, a good foreigner.  The kind who works or studies.  The kind who is an trained carpenter, or engineer, or a doctor.  The kind who open restaurants with unfamiliar but unchallenging food.  Smiling, young, healthy, industrious, good foreigners.

Good foreigners are highly sought after at the moment.  This week, for example, one of the big business groups said that Denmark should aim for at least 150,000 new immigrants in the next 20 years.  The Danish population is aging, so the country needs younger workers to drive Denmark's economy.  The business group held a conference on ways to attract them, and make them feel welcome. Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning Schimidt came by to offer more international schools.  She promised less red tape.  These are things we can do to attract good foreigners.

On the other hand, in just the past couple of months, more than 20,000 Syrian refugees have arrived in Denmark. But no one's too worried about how to attract more refugees or make them feel more welcome.  In fact, some Danish political  parties are trying to change the asylum conditions and send as many of these people as possible back home to the battlefield.

It reminds me sometimes of an old fashioned faucet, with the hot and cold knobs.  Denmark is trying to turn one knob on, and the other one off.

I did a little crowdsourcing for this week's podcast.   I asked some of our listeners, and some people on Facebook - what were some of the small cultural mistakes  - the dos and don'ts, the faux pas - you made when you first arrived in Denmark?

I got a whole selection of answers.  Don't keep your shoes on while entering someone's home was one thing.  Don't arrive even a few minutes late was another. The 8:00 meeting is not an 8:05 meeting.  Trying to bum a cigarette - not done in Denmark.  Calling after 9:30 in the evening or so - not done in Denmark.  Dropping by to see a friend unannounced - not done in Denmark.

One girl mentioned that she had eaten the last piece of cake on a plate.  You should never eat the last piece of anything in Denmark, at least without asking every single person present. If you don't want to do that, the proper etiquette is to slice the piece of cake in half, and take half.  And then the next person will slice that half in half.  And so on. In the end there will be a little transparent slice left to shrivel up in the middle of the plate.  

You wouldn't know it, but Denmark and China have much more in common than both having red flags and a love for green technology.  Denmark and China have a surprisingly deep relationship. It helps that the Chinese have a deep love for Hans Christian Andersen.

I was in London this week, and did a little fall wardrobe shopping.   I got tired after walking for awhile, and it was lunchtime, so I sat down in a pub.  I had a beer and a fish and chips and a British guy next to me was also having a beer and fish and chips and so we just chatted through lunch.  We talked about politics, the weather, the job market.  After lunch, we waved goodbye and I went back to shopping.  It was a fun lunch, but I never found out his name.

The reason I mention this is that it never could have happened in Denmark.  Danes don't talk to strangers.  They talk to their friends.  The idea of a casual lunch with someone you will never see again makes no sense to them.

Foreigners often say it's hard to make friends in Denmark.  This is because Danes take friendship very seriously.  A friendship is a commitment, often a lifetime commitment.  You will often meet adult Danes who have friends they met in kindergarten.  As a matter of fact, this is why I chose to put my daughter in a Danish school, instead of an international one – I wanted her to have those deep friendships.  In some international schools, your friends are moving in and out all the time as Mom and Dad get transferred around the world.

But for you, as a foreigner, making new freinds can be tough. Danes don't really have the idea of 'an acquaintance'  - they have the word, en bekendte, but it isn't used very often.  If you were in some other countries, an acquaintance might invite you, maybe your partner, over for dinner and then, three months later, you'd invite the acquaintance and her partner and maybe it would continue and maybe it wouldn't.

That light, no-obligation friendship – Danes don't do that. In Denmark, friendship is an obligation, and a trust. Friends don't let each other down.  So, when a Dane meets you, he may think ahhhh he's a great guy, but I really don't have room for another friend. I have no time to see the friends I have.  Meaning, the people he's known since he was three years old.

I get a lot of mail at the How To Live in Denmark podcast, and some of it is from people who want to move to Denmark, but they're not sure what to do to make money once they get here.  But, I do speak English, they say.  Can I make money in Denmark just off of just speaking English?

Generally, no.  No you can't.  I mean, I do, but I was an experienced journalist before I got here. But English is not a rare commodity in Denmark. 

Danish children start learning English when they're six years old.  And because British and American TV shows and movies and are not dubbed, children are constantly hearing English even earlier.  Danish adults often read novels in English, and by the time you get to university, pretty much all the high-level textbooks are in English.  There's just no economic case for translating textbooks into a language that only 5.6 million people speak.

So, English is everywhere in Denmark.  And Danes love English.  When you come to Denmark, you'll find that shops and youth programs and rock bands have English names because the Danes think it sounds cool.  Danes also like to tuck bits of English into their Danish speech, like 'Du fik et nyt job!  Nice" or 'Er det her den billigste togbillet til Roskilde?  I don't know."

For some Danes, particularly younger Danes, the Danish language is seen as provincial, old-fashioned, kind of like those dusty little porcelain knick-knacks your grandparents keep around the house. 

So another question I get a lot is, if you already speak English, is it worth learning Danish at all? Yes, it is. Parties are more fun if you can speak Danish. There's nothing worse than everyone laughing uproariously at some very funny joke, and you having to wait there like a piece of furniture until someone takes the time to explain it to you.

When you think you're talking to the authorities in Denmark, you're often not talking to the authorities. If it comes to bus service, train service, unemployment compensation, homeless shelters, construction, even fire protection and ambulance services – you will be talking to a private company hired by the authorities.

At any rate, some things are still run directly by the government, like the immigration service and local affairs.  So there are some times when you do need to speak to civil servants in Denmark. There is a way to do this.

Put at least a half an hour aside, since you may have to wait in a telephone queue.  When it's your turn, the first thing you do is identify yourself by name.  'Hi, this is Kay Xander Mellish."  And then state your question. "Somebody has drawn graffiti of a giant penis on the city-owned wall right outside my living room window.  Could you send someone to remove it?"  That's an actual case, by the way.

When you speak to the Danish civil servant, tone is really important.  Danes respond very badly to anger or conflict. You want to take the angle that we're equals all we want to do is get this problem solved together. You want to go in there with a positive, we can do it together! spirit.

Most state workers in Denmark are pretty competent.  Working for the state is paid well, and they never ask for bribes.  Like most Danes, they want to do their job well, and they feel that they do.  Danish civil servants take pride in their work. 

That said, it still took six months to get that giant penis graffiti removed.

I got an email a couple of weeks ago at howtoliveindenmark.com from a Danish woman who now lives in Germany.  She says that this podcast helps her keep in touch with life back home, but that she doesn't really like it.  She writes: "I have to tell you, that almost every story has a negative ring to it when you portray your thoughts on Denmark and Danes. I cannot shake the feeling, that you really deep down, do not like Danes or Denmark. I find this sad, as you have been living there now over a decade."

Lady – I won't say your name on the air – but you're full of baloney.  Of course I like Denmark.  Otherwise I wouldn't be here.  I do have a pretty nice country to go back to.  

I like living in Denmark, for a lot of different reasons.

One of them is that people here have a lot of time to spend with their children.  There's a cliché in the U.S. business world of the CEO who quits because 'I want to spend more time with my family'.  That always means he's been fired.  But in Denmark, people really do want to spend a lot of time with the people they care about.  I think that's one reason why a lot of people here are not very ambitious – because getting ahead means working a lot of hours, and they want their free time.

The pace of life in Denmark is much slower than it is in the US, or the UK.  There's much less competitiveness, which can be a good and a bad thing. There's never a feeling of fighting to get through the day.  Before I lived in Copenhagen, I lived in Manhattan, and there, everybody wanted your job, everybody wanted your apartment, everybody wanted your boyfriend, everybody wanted your seat at the restaurant – everybody wanted everything you had, all the time.  Denmark is much more relaxing.  And people have much less stuff here.  The taxes are so high that you can't buy a lot of stuff. People don't go shopping just for fun. So people have fewer things, but better things.  That means less clutter, and less stuff to clean, which is always a positive in my book.

Other things I like about Denmark. I like the biking culture, and the mass transport culture.  I do have a drivers' license, and I enjoy driving a car, but I also like the interaction with people you get on a bike or a train or a bus.

And the public transport system generally works well – not always, but generally. Things work well in Denmark, not as aggressively as they do in Germany, where I used to live, but generally well.   I love Southern Europe, but I don't think I could live there. The disorganization would drive me crazy.

In general, I find Copenhagen quiet, but sophisticated. I'm happy living here.  I have no plans to live anyplace else.