Great country, terrific people. Travelling through Latin America 25+ years ago, I met four Danes separately all of them to a man and woman among the worst people I'd ever met. Subsequent to that, once again living back in Europe, I met many more, visited Copenhagen and the situation was reversed. I figure that the worst are simply sent to places like Ecuador and Guatemala to get rid of them.
As for "Another Round" - a splendid film. A Viking Epic for middle-aged suburban men everywhere.
PS In my home state of Texas there's a Danish settlement dating back to the 19th century but the Danes I met from there -- admittedly only two, mother and father -- were fine people. The father spoke Danish fluently with the exchange student who lived with them. Although the same student made fun of my pronunciation of Volvo, but otherwise a good guy.
Indeed. The Mermaid is like Greyfriars Bobby in Edinburgh or those two decommissioned red phone boxes in Westminster Sq - tourist box-ticking beacons that don’t quite add up.
I had a French friend who lived in Denmark in the 70s with his then Danish girlfriend. He claims a Danish female motorcycle gang sexually harassed and all but raped him on one occasion. I actually believe him as he was always on the level about everything else. He was quite handsome which probably had something to do with it.
Denmark is an extraordinary country, and Copenhagen is easily one of my favorite cities. We spent a week or so there with our girls a few years back and had a delightful time. I do hope that it remains largely off the U.S. tourist radar. Don't go talking about it too much, Ed!
I wonder to what degree much of the rest of Western Europe could have functioned more like Denmark, if they had made different policy choices along the way. Or is Denmark's model uniquely tied to Danish culture?
"During their stay here the Danes added to our vocabulary, adding such words as scream, take, clasp, skull, anger, bang, berserk, gruesome, hit, rape, screech, scuffle, scream, slaughter, take and skull. It gives some indication of the richness of life that the Vikings brought with them."
The Scandinavians' impact on the English language was in many ways more significant than that of the Norman French. While the amount of Norse vocabulary in modern English is relatively small, certainly compared to that of French and Latin, it had a profound impact on grammar.
Before the Norse invasions, English closely resembled other European languages (particularly West Germanic languages like modern German) in having grammatical gender for inanimate objects (three genders to be precise), different verb endings depending on the subject, and even noun inflection whereby the ending of the noun changes depending on its role in the sentence (the possessive " 's" is a remnant of this). The large-scale influx of Scandinavian settlers drastically simplified the English language as in a pre-literate, pre-mass education world, one could not just observe charts to know the proper endings, etc. Subsequently, English became a far "weirder" language relative to other Indo-European languages thanks to the "bad" imitation of the language by the Scandis. Records show the decline of verb endings, grammatical gender, and noun inflection beginning in the North of England and gradually spreading to the Southwest.
It's remarkable how Danish influenced English even as far as names for body parts, e.g. leg, which are often the most conservative items in any language. Yet the DNA imprint of the Danes on the English is much less than you'd expect, last time I checked.
I wonder to what extent Danish Viking DNA of the 9th and 10th centuries was identical to Anglo-Saxon DNA of the 5th and 6th centuries. Can the two even be teased apart?
I have somewhat of a hot take on Denmark. I absolutely agree that their culture is incredible and plays a large role in their success but at the same time they’ve had some huge advantages which get under played.
They avoided the worst of the Second World War and had a huge commercial partner on their doorstep that was in desperate need of reconstruction. Yet despite being pretty much one the front line of the Cold War that followed they consistently spent significant less in terms of gdp on their military than we did saving billions.
They’ve done a remarkable job with their wind power but they are also self sufficient in oil, something that doesn’t get commented on, which is better per capita than the uk was.
And if you compare Denmark which is basically a city state with agricultural land around it, with greater London, then despite the latter having to prop up most our postindustrial regions, Greater London still has a higher gdp per capita.
I know much of this is sour grapes and Denmark is a wonderful country but i don’t think their many advances get mentioned enough when people say we should just be more like Denmark.
I wasn’t going to say it, but now that you have pissed in the punch-bowl, the Danish response to the German invasion was so weedy they should be ashamed. The Norwegians did a lot better, shooting down planes and crippling a warship, for example. Also, helping Jews leave is something, but then that suited the Nazis just fine.
The Norwegians live in a kind of Arctic Switzerland, the Danes live in what is basically a big cow pasture. That Denmark would be easy to conquer and hold seems obvious. Note they are a related people. And were even one kingdom, once.
Oslo is quite far south. It was more the level of resistance: Norway was never going to hold off the Germans, but they gave them the proverbial “bloody nose”. And the Belgians put up some resistance, despite facing half of the entire German army.
Denmark did a little better in the war with the German Confederation (basically Prussia, with a few Saxons and Bavarians) over the Schleswig-Holstein duchies. Princess Alexandra, daughter of Christian IX, had just married Prince Albert Edward (later Edward VII), and the anti-German/Prussian pro-Danish feeling in Britain and the royal family was pretty intense. This, notwithstanding the Princess Royal having married the Prussian crown Prince William in 1858.
On a side note: I always wonder what Britain and royal family felt about the annexation of the kingdom of Hanover in 1866, having backed the Austrians in their war with Prussia.
Indeed. Essentially, Bismark orchestrated three wars to cement German unification under Prussian, rather than Austrian, leadership. The Danish (1864), Austrian (1866) and French wars (1870). The latter led to Napoleon III's defeat and downfall at Sedan and the siege of Paris, the Commune and the creation of the Third Republic. And, of course, the annexation of Alsace Lorraine and the proclamation of the Second Reich in Versailles.
Yes, the F-P War of 1870 was a hammer-blow for the French. Incredible that they believed they could snatch Alsace-Lorraine back in 1914! I suppose they got it the hard way in 1918-19…So, the Germans proclaimed their Second Reich on French territory? Didn’t know that. Explains a lot of subsequent events!
The Danes must have had a decent navy, given their possession of Greenland and Iceland? We basically both know they didn’t want to fight their much bigger cousins, surely? One could easily criticise the Swedes too, who were terrified of being invaded - or one could argue they didn’t see it as their war, like the Swiss, the Irish, and even the USA did at the time…
The Danes realized from the start that they couldn't possibly fend off the gigantic German military, and so put humanitarian instinct before pointless heroism. There was, in fact, an active resistance movement during the occupation, and may Danes were executed by the German authorities for their efforts.
This is not to detract from the Norwegians, who were valiant in their resistance. But as another poster mentioned, they had a much more defensible country to work with.
Re: It’s also far more common for children to walk the streets unaccompanied there.
Here in the US people in my age range and older fondly recall being a "free range kid"-- we wandered the streets (at least locally) on foot and bike when we are of fairly tender years. I biked all over and went mulberry picking with friends by the lake when I was just 10 years old. Heck, after my mother died (I was nine) I became something of a latchkey kid. These days some people affect outrage if a parent allows their kids to play unsupervised.
Re: a quarter of Danish children aged between 7 and 14 have part-time jobs
Wow. Just wow. Child labor was hard illegal in the US given the abuses of the 19th century. You might have a newspaper route (explanation on my request for younger readers), maybe earn a little money cutting grass or shoveling snow for neighbors. Girls might babysit. But 14 was the absolute youngest for regular on the books employment, and more generally after school jobs were only a thing after one turned 16 and could get a driver license. These days even that is rare.
Re: the ancestors of the English arrived from Denmark and northern Germany
I wonder when and how Old Norse (ancestral to Danish of course) came to be spoken in Denmark since some sort of Anglic dialect was spoken there when the Anglo-Saxon migrations took place. Were Norse speakers already showing up at the time and that gave impetus to the migration across the North Sea? By the way Danish is said to be one of the most difficult European languages as far as mastering the pronunciation goes.
Re: During their stay here the Danes added to our vocabulary,
Also, "sky", "egg", "skirt" and the pronouns "they/them/their". (Old English third person pronouns were confusing and the single and plural 3rd person verb forms were almost identical-- the language needed some clarity there)
As someone who learned Danish, I can attest that it is daunting at first to get the pronunciation right - not helped by the fact that Danes will respond to your bad pronunciation by replying in English. But once you get the feel for a few unusual sounds, it's not actually that bad. And an English speaker and reader is used to a non-phonetic spelling system!
And you're right that the grammar is wonderfully simple - no verb conjugation, for example, and relatively few verb tenses.
Is it mainly an issue with lots of odd vowels? People complain about our English vowels too when coming from a language with a few simple vowels like Spanish. Or are there weird consonants too, unlike anything else in the neighborhood?
The "soft D" is a tricky one for non-Danish speakers. I'm not a linguist, so I can't give the technical name for the sound, but it is something between the English L and TH. There's also the regular use of the glottal stop, which takes some getting used to. And there is the "narrow U" sound of the letter Y, similar to the German U umlaut or the French U, a sound not used in English. But a little practice can get your mouth to make pretty much any sound at all.
I recall reading the definite article is suffixed to the noun (or noun phrase). That's true of Swedish and Norwegian too. And it's also found in some Balkan languages-- Bulgarian and Romanian for sure, but not Greek (not sure about Serbian or Albanian).
"The Danes conquered England in 1016, but it seems likely that some Danes fought on the English side at the Battle of Hastings 50 years later, sent by their king, Harold Godwinson’s cousin. There were also hundreds of ‘settled Danes’, the descendants of Vikings who lived in the Danelaw and were evolving into Yorkshiremen."
Harold was himself half Danish I believe.
I often imagine that had Hastings gone the other way (or had there been an earlier point of divergence that ensured there wouldn't be a Norman Frenchman in line for the throne), there would have been a lot more conflicts between England and the Scandinavian countries in the succeeding centuries due to the pre-1066 ruling class continuing and feeling a greater sense of entitlement to the thrones of those countries.
I had a wonderful visit to Copenhagen earlier this year. The people were reserved but friendly, which is the best combination. The museums were first rate, the food was terrific, and the city felt very safe and orderly.
Before I went, I read Tove Ditlevsen's brilliant memoir trilogy Childhood, Youth, Dependency, which gave a different, more ragged sort of perspective on the city. It was interesting to see that Istedgade, behind the main railway station where she grew up, was still a little seedy and run down. The book helped make Copenhagen feel like a real, lived-in place rather than just another attractive European capital. As in so many major cities, the former slum districts that have largely been transformed into cool hipster destinations.
I did notice, however, that some loud and obnoxious Gaza protesters were gathered in the main square, while the synagogue had armed police standing guard outside. A reminder that, despite generally sensible immigration policies and a strong record of integration, Copenhagen hasn't escaped the omnicause and the ancient hatreds attached to it either.
Great country, terrific people. Travelling through Latin America 25+ years ago, I met four Danes separately all of them to a man and woman among the worst people I'd ever met. Subsequent to that, once again living back in Europe, I met many more, visited Copenhagen and the situation was reversed. I figure that the worst are simply sent to places like Ecuador and Guatemala to get rid of them.
As for "Another Round" - a splendid film. A Viking Epic for middle-aged suburban men everywhere.
PS In my home state of Texas there's a Danish settlement dating back to the 19th century but the Danes I met from there -- admittedly only two, mother and father -- were fine people. The father spoke Danish fluently with the exchange student who lived with them. Although the same student made fun of my pronunciation of Volvo, but otherwise a good guy.
yes it really was. I did a little pilgrimage to the spot where the finale is set, near the Mermaid (which everyone wants to visit for some reason)
Indeed. The Mermaid is like Greyfriars Bobby in Edinburgh or those two decommissioned red phone boxes in Westminster Sq - tourist box-ticking beacons that don’t quite add up.
I had a French friend who lived in Denmark in the 70s with his then Danish girlfriend. He claims a Danish female motorcycle gang sexually harassed and all but raped him on one occasion. I actually believe him as he was always on the level about everything else. He was quite handsome which probably had something to do with it.
hmm. I think I would be somewhat sceptical but I suppose we have to say #Ibelievehim
He seemed to be genuinely upset by it.
Hey, maybe that explains the Vikings!
Take a look at your list of Dane-words and clasp your skull in shame!
My apologies. I am normally pretty good at spotting mistakes!
And skulk away ...
That’s a great dig, listing all those words to show the enriching effect of Vikings on British culture.
Oh well, most people’s remote ancestors will not bear very close examination. Viking, Hun, Zulu, Apache. It’s a worldwide trend.
Denmark is an extraordinary country, and Copenhagen is easily one of my favorite cities. We spent a week or so there with our girls a few years back and had a delightful time. I do hope that it remains largely off the U.S. tourist radar. Don't go talking about it too much, Ed!
I wonder to what degree much of the rest of Western Europe could have functioned more like Denmark, if they had made different policy choices along the way. Or is Denmark's model uniquely tied to Danish culture?
"During their stay here the Danes added to our vocabulary, adding such words as scream, take, clasp, skull, anger, bang, berserk, gruesome, hit, rape, screech, scuffle, scream, slaughter, take and skull. It gives some indication of the richness of life that the Vikings brought with them."
The Scandinavians' impact on the English language was in many ways more significant than that of the Norman French. While the amount of Norse vocabulary in modern English is relatively small, certainly compared to that of French and Latin, it had a profound impact on grammar.
Before the Norse invasions, English closely resembled other European languages (particularly West Germanic languages like modern German) in having grammatical gender for inanimate objects (three genders to be precise), different verb endings depending on the subject, and even noun inflection whereby the ending of the noun changes depending on its role in the sentence (the possessive " 's" is a remnant of this). The large-scale influx of Scandinavian settlers drastically simplified the English language as in a pre-literate, pre-mass education world, one could not just observe charts to know the proper endings, etc. Subsequently, English became a far "weirder" language relative to other Indo-European languages thanks to the "bad" imitation of the language by the Scandis. Records show the decline of verb endings, grammatical gender, and noun inflection beginning in the North of England and gradually spreading to the Southwest.
It's remarkable how Danish influenced English even as far as names for body parts, e.g. leg, which are often the most conservative items in any language. Yet the DNA imprint of the Danes on the English is much less than you'd expect, last time I checked.
I wonder to what extent Danish Viking DNA of the 9th and 10th centuries was identical to Anglo-Saxon DNA of the 5th and 6th centuries. Can the two even be teased apart?
I have somewhat of a hot take on Denmark. I absolutely agree that their culture is incredible and plays a large role in their success but at the same time they’ve had some huge advantages which get under played.
They avoided the worst of the Second World War and had a huge commercial partner on their doorstep that was in desperate need of reconstruction. Yet despite being pretty much one the front line of the Cold War that followed they consistently spent significant less in terms of gdp on their military than we did saving billions.
They’ve done a remarkable job with their wind power but they are also self sufficient in oil, something that doesn’t get commented on, which is better per capita than the uk was.
And if you compare Denmark which is basically a city state with agricultural land around it, with greater London, then despite the latter having to prop up most our postindustrial regions, Greater London still has a higher gdp per capita.
I know much of this is sour grapes and Denmark is a wonderful country but i don’t think their many advances get mentioned enough when people say we should just be more like Denmark.
I wasn’t going to say it, but now that you have pissed in the punch-bowl, the Danish response to the German invasion was so weedy they should be ashamed. The Norwegians did a lot better, shooting down planes and crippling a warship, for example. Also, helping Jews leave is something, but then that suited the Nazis just fine.
The Norwegians live in a kind of Arctic Switzerland, the Danes live in what is basically a big cow pasture. That Denmark would be easy to conquer and hold seems obvious. Note they are a related people. And were even one kingdom, once.
Oslo is quite far south. It was more the level of resistance: Norway was never going to hold off the Germans, but they gave them the proverbial “bloody nose”. And the Belgians put up some resistance, despite facing half of the entire German army.
If the Danes didn’t share a land border and had lots of fjords and mountains they may have done a lot better.
Denmark did a little better in the war with the German Confederation (basically Prussia, with a few Saxons and Bavarians) over the Schleswig-Holstein duchies. Princess Alexandra, daughter of Christian IX, had just married Prince Albert Edward (later Edward VII), and the anti-German/Prussian pro-Danish feeling in Britain and the royal family was pretty intense. This, notwithstanding the Princess Royal having married the Prussian crown Prince William in 1858.
On a side note: I always wonder what Britain and royal family felt about the annexation of the kingdom of Hanover in 1866, having backed the Austrians in their war with Prussia.
This is the pre-unification story of “Germany” presumably? I shall have to read up on it! (I know a little about Bismarck but that’s about it…)
Indeed. Essentially, Bismark orchestrated three wars to cement German unification under Prussian, rather than Austrian, leadership. The Danish (1864), Austrian (1866) and French wars (1870). The latter led to Napoleon III's defeat and downfall at Sedan and the siege of Paris, the Commune and the creation of the Third Republic. And, of course, the annexation of Alsace Lorraine and the proclamation of the Second Reich in Versailles.
Yes, the F-P War of 1870 was a hammer-blow for the French. Incredible that they believed they could snatch Alsace-Lorraine back in 1914! I suppose they got it the hard way in 1918-19…So, the Germans proclaimed their Second Reich on French territory? Didn’t know that. Explains a lot of subsequent events!
Belgium was more than twice their population, heavily armed and fortified
, and fully expected to fight the Germans.
The Danes must have had a decent navy, given their possession of Greenland and Iceland? We basically both know they didn’t want to fight their much bigger cousins, surely? One could easily criticise the Swedes too, who were terrified of being invaded - or one could argue they didn’t see it as their war, like the Swiss, the Irish, and even the USA did at the time…
Also, almost 85% of the population of Denmark is Danes. I think that contributes quite heavily to the high-trust nature of their society.
Lovely write-up on Denmark. Thanks for this!
As a Dane I can only approve of this post. You are truly the most Danophilic writer on Substack.
The Danes realized from the start that they couldn't possibly fend off the gigantic German military, and so put humanitarian instinct before pointless heroism. There was, in fact, an active resistance movement during the occupation, and may Danes were executed by the German authorities for their efforts.
This is not to detract from the Norwegians, who were valiant in their resistance. But as another poster mentioned, they had a much more defensible country to work with.
Re: It’s also far more common for children to walk the streets unaccompanied there.
Here in the US people in my age range and older fondly recall being a "free range kid"-- we wandered the streets (at least locally) on foot and bike when we are of fairly tender years. I biked all over and went mulberry picking with friends by the lake when I was just 10 years old. Heck, after my mother died (I was nine) I became something of a latchkey kid. These days some people affect outrage if a parent allows their kids to play unsupervised.
Re: a quarter of Danish children aged between 7 and 14 have part-time jobs
Wow. Just wow. Child labor was hard illegal in the US given the abuses of the 19th century. You might have a newspaper route (explanation on my request for younger readers), maybe earn a little money cutting grass or shoveling snow for neighbors. Girls might babysit. But 14 was the absolute youngest for regular on the books employment, and more generally after school jobs were only a thing after one turned 16 and could get a driver license. These days even that is rare.
Re: the ancestors of the English arrived from Denmark and northern Germany
I wonder when and how Old Norse (ancestral to Danish of course) came to be spoken in Denmark since some sort of Anglic dialect was spoken there when the Anglo-Saxon migrations took place. Were Norse speakers already showing up at the time and that gave impetus to the migration across the North Sea? By the way Danish is said to be one of the most difficult European languages as far as mastering the pronunciation goes.
Re: During their stay here the Danes added to our vocabulary,
Also, "sky", "egg", "skirt" and the pronouns "they/them/their". (Old English third person pronouns were confusing and the single and plural 3rd person verb forms were almost identical-- the language needed some clarity there)
Speaking from personal experience you are right about this,
"By the way Danish is said to be one of the most difficult European languages as far as mastering the pronunciation goes."
A shame as everything else apart from the definite article (which is crazy*) about the language is easy.
(A car = en bil
The car = bilen)
As someone who learned Danish, I can attest that it is daunting at first to get the pronunciation right - not helped by the fact that Danes will respond to your bad pronunciation by replying in English. But once you get the feel for a few unusual sounds, it's not actually that bad. And an English speaker and reader is used to a non-phonetic spelling system!
And you're right that the grammar is wonderfully simple - no verb conjugation, for example, and relatively few verb tenses.
Is it mainly an issue with lots of odd vowels? People complain about our English vowels too when coming from a language with a few simple vowels like Spanish. Or are there weird consonants too, unlike anything else in the neighborhood?
The "soft D" is a tricky one for non-Danish speakers. I'm not a linguist, so I can't give the technical name for the sound, but it is something between the English L and TH. There's also the regular use of the glottal stop, which takes some getting used to. And there is the "narrow U" sound of the letter Y, similar to the German U umlaut or the French U, a sound not used in English. But a little practice can get your mouth to make pretty much any sound at all.
Sadly this -" a little practice can get your mouth to make pretty much any sound at all." is not always true
I can't roll my rs despite many years of practice.
I didn't find "the "narrow U" sound of the letter Y" too tricky IIRC - although I haven't spoken Danish for many years.
The main problem is that there is the gender is non obvious compared to say Spanish.
If you get the gender wrong then the pronunciation is wrong for example
husen sounds very different from huset (the correct version for the house).
There are some strange things about grammar for example two different words for if
https://ordomdansk.com/2021/04/04/is-it-om-or-hvis/
Same also for ask and know.
(Spanish and Portuguese also have two words for ask and know - but not if).
https://elon.io/grammar/danish/choosing/vide-vs-kende
I recall reading the definite article is suffixed to the noun (or noun phrase). That's true of Swedish and Norwegian too. And it's also found in some Balkan languages-- Bulgarian and Romanian for sure, but not Greek (not sure about Serbian or Albanian).
A grand country. I worked there in the sense of making frequent visits to a consultancy where I was an advisor. Always civilised and charming
Their suicide rate is higher than the UK's
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate
So hard to believe that they are the second happiest country in the world.
I don't believe such surveys either.
They're pretty far north-- getting into territory where winter SAD is probably a factor.
True - it wasn't a criticism of Denmark more happiness surveys. Weirdly their suicide rates are only higher for women not men.
"The Danes conquered England in 1016, but it seems likely that some Danes fought on the English side at the Battle of Hastings 50 years later, sent by their king, Harold Godwinson’s cousin. There were also hundreds of ‘settled Danes’, the descendants of Vikings who lived in the Danelaw and were evolving into Yorkshiremen."
Harold was himself half Danish I believe.
I often imagine that had Hastings gone the other way (or had there been an earlier point of divergence that ensured there wouldn't be a Norman Frenchman in line for the throne), there would have been a lot more conflicts between England and the Scandinavian countries in the succeeding centuries due to the pre-1066 ruling class continuing and feeling a greater sense of entitlement to the thrones of those countries.
He was. Harold is a Skandi name too.
I had a wonderful visit to Copenhagen earlier this year. The people were reserved but friendly, which is the best combination. The museums were first rate, the food was terrific, and the city felt very safe and orderly.
Before I went, I read Tove Ditlevsen's brilliant memoir trilogy Childhood, Youth, Dependency, which gave a different, more ragged sort of perspective on the city. It was interesting to see that Istedgade, behind the main railway station where she grew up, was still a little seedy and run down. The book helped make Copenhagen feel like a real, lived-in place rather than just another attractive European capital. As in so many major cities, the former slum districts that have largely been transformed into cool hipster destinations.
I did notice, however, that some loud and obnoxious Gaza protesters were gathered in the main square, while the synagogue had armed police standing guard outside. A reminder that, despite generally sensible immigration policies and a strong record of integration, Copenhagen hasn't escaped the omnicause and the ancient hatreds attached to it either.
"Woke Denmark was the first country to abolish the slave trade, in 1792, although slavery itself wasn’t phased out until much later."
The modern woke seem to believe that Freedom Is Slavery though.
I understand from the youth that holding a job, where you have to work before they pay you, is Just Like Slavery.
Fun fact about, "Lego, from leg godt – play well."
I knew some Danes in the 90s who didn't know that was where it came from.