Rolling my eyes again

After more than seven years here in Denmark, I didn't think I could be astounded anymore. I'm used to the quirks, I roll my eyes at the things I once found weird and I quietly shake my head at the things I'll never get used to. At the same time, there are even things I have come to prefer, respect and sometimes sigh with relief at all the things we have escaped back home.

Today, however, I am gobsmacked and can't begin to work out why Danes have developed this particular way of living and coping with things. Sometimes something is just such an obvious necessity that I genuinely can't understand why they can't see it.

I grew up with a Kwik Fit, McConechys, Smileys and Halfords on every other corner. Yes, I know Scotland has many more potholes than Denmark, given that we currently have none in our council area. I think I saw one in Odense about three months ago, actually, but still. When you get a puncture, you want to be able to drive less than five minutes to the nearest tyre place and get it changed before the tyre has time to lose all its air. You want to be able to do this on an evening or at the weekend, and preferably without having to book an appointment three days in advance.

Today Thomas's car started beeping because the tyre pressure was wrong on the back-left tyre. He had a look and found something like a nail sticking out of the rubber. 😕

Granted, this is the first time in seven years that we've actually needed to replace a tyre, so I started scanning my mental map of the island for the nearest drive-in tyre place and couldn't think of one. Surely I must be mistaken?

So I Googled it. There isn't one. What the actual fuck?

Apparently I need to phone a normal garage, book the car in and then get it fixed. Seriously, just why?

This is Denmark. The country where everything works like clockwork. You can receive a digital hospital appointment, send absolutely anyone money using only your phone number and receive an official message informing you that your bins are going to be emptied 47 minutes later than usual. But if you get a puncture, apparently you are expected to park the car, and wait to phone a garage during opening hours, negotiate an appointment and then somehow arrange your life around the garage's schedule, all the while crossing your fingers you still have enough air in your tyre to get you there.

If you get a puncture on Saturday afternoon, you apparently are meant to just look at your car sadly until Monday morning at the earliest.

And I realise that this is a very British way of looking at things. We have built an entire economy around the principle that if something goes wrong with your car, there will be a bloke somewhere nearby who will fix it while you stand around drinking a cup of tea. Perhaps this isn't actually a fundamental human right. Perhaps I have simply been spoiled by a lifetime of garages, tyre depots and men called Dave who can change a tyre before you've finished saying, "I've got a puncture."

But honestly, after seven years, I still occasionally encounter something in Denmark that makes me feel as though I have arrived from another planet.

And today's thing is apparently tyres.

Danish "high school"

From a Scottish point of view, calling the Danish gymnasium (STX) a “high school” is slightly misleading. The translation is convenient, but it carries assumptions about age, structure, and the role of adults that simply don’t hold up once you look more closely.

The first difference is when students actually start. In Scotland, “high school” begins around age 11 or 12 and runs straight through the teenage years. Tiny pupils in huge blazers they might one day grow into once they hit puberty trudge in with their top buttons down and their school-coloured tie knotted tightly, no matter the weather. In Denmark, students finish folkeskole and then often take a more scenic route before entering gymnasium. Many spend a year at an efterskole (a weird boarding school with a specific focus such as gymnastics, German, art or whatever), and some even take a second year to complete the optional 10th grade. Amaia is about to finish fokeskole in a month and more than 85% of her class are opting for this gap year. So, by the time they begin the three year STX programme, they might be 16 like Amaia, but just as often 17 or even 18. It already feels less like school and more like something edging towards adult life.

As a result, a single class can span several birth years. Anna’s class, for example, includes her, born in 2007, alongside a majority from 2006 and even a couple from 2005, who are actually older than her older brother. It is not unusual for siblings only two years apart to end up in the same year group. The tidy, age based system familiar in Scotland quietly falls apart. When I tell people that Anna's year in Mearns Castle graduated last summer, they are gobsmacked as they do not expect anyone under 19 to be finishing high school. And when you add in that most kids also do a gap year before uni to save up some money to move out, and to see the world, the thought of beginning uni before 20 here leaves people reeling.

And then there is the independence, which is where things really start to feel unfamiliar. There is essentially no parental involvement other than our invite to the graduation ceremony at the end. No parents’ evenings, no steady stream of report cards, no expectation that school will keep you updated. If a student skips class, the school deals with the student, not the parent. You are not copied into the email, because there is no email. If your kid drops out or switches to a different type of high school such as a business or vocational one, you only find out if your kid tells you!

Assessment follows the same logic. Students accumulate grades continuously, building a GPA from exams, written work and even class participation along uni lines and at the end of each year they have to write a dissertation, bigger each time till the one Anna just finished which was about 35 pages long. I can't imagine any Scottish kid not fainting at that! They even have to meet with a teacher and a ministry of education representative to defend their dissertation in the last month before graduating! It feels much closer to a university model than a school one, with the emphasis firmly on the student managing their own performance and knowing their stuff.

Daily life reinforces that sense of autonomy. With the driving age at 17, many students simply drive themselves to and from school, particularly outside the cities. There is no drop off, no pick up, no hovering. They arrive and leave much as adults would. They study alongside evening and Saturday jobs which still exist here and kids aren't expected to volunteer unpaid for years on end before finally being given some recompense for real work.

Some of them are, in fact, already living like adults. In most classes there will be two or three students who have moved out of home altogether, living alone or with a boyfriend or girlfriend. They receive SU, a fairly generous state education grant that is not means tested, which makes this possible. From a Scottish perspective, where most teenagers are still firmly at home, this feels like a different life stage entirely.

That independence extends even to travel. On school trips, students are often handed their tickets and expected to make their own way. When Léon and Anna went on their Spanish exchange, they were given flights from Copenhagen to Brussels and on to Málaga and trusted to navigate the journey themselves with no accompanying teacher. It is the sort of thing that would cause mild panic in a Scottish school office and would throw many Scottish parents into apoplectic states.

The relationship between students and teachers is also looser and more informal. Teachers are addressed by their first names. Students often have their teachers’ personal mobile numbers. It is not unusual for social overlap to happen, whether that is a barbecue at a teacher’s house or something more spontaneous.

Social life around school reflects broader Danish norms. Alcohol appears quite openly at school parties and Friday cafés and is treated as a normal part of socialising rather than something to be policed into secrecy. One recent example captures the tone. Anna texted me last Wednesday to say her history class had gone into town to look at historical sites, but she would be late home because the group, teacher included, had decided to go for a beer at a bar in the sunshine afterwards as it was such a lovely day. The teacher even had the students buy his drinks using their student discount cards and then sent them the money back via MobilePay. Efficient, if nothing else!

Put all of this together and gymnasium looks far less like what a Scottish parent would recognise as “high school” and much more like a hybrid of maybe Langside college or early university. The academics are serious, but the framework is built on trust and a fairly bold assumption that by this stage young people are already capable of running their own lives, or at least learning how to without too much supervision. Much as I loved Mearns Castle, where my older kids studied, for its academics, I love the way Danish high school graduates feels already much more ready for the outside world in general.

Flying the flag

In Denmark, flags are everywhere, and yet they rarely carry any hint of tension. The red and white Dannebrog waves from flagpoles in more than half of all gardens, decorates birthday tables, and appears on cakes, cards, and wrapping paper. It is part of family celebrations, community gatherings, and everyday life. A small paper flag might sit proudly beside a plate of open sandwiches at a confirmation lunch, or a neat row of them might line the path to a summerhouse where friends are gathering to celebrate a birthday. The Danish flag is part of the landscape. It is not reserved for official events or political statements. It belongs to everyone.

What strikes many newcomers, myself included, is how natural and unselfconscious this relationship with the flag feels. It is woven into ordinary life, and its presence suggests warmth and shared identity rather than nationalism. In Denmark, to put out a flag is to say, “something happy is happening here.” It signals inclusion, not exclusion.

When I first moved here, I found this remarkable. In Britain, the sight of a flag was already beginning to feel complicated and this summer it has exploded onto the scene is a very negative way. The Union Jack has had its own baggage ever since Brexit and even the Scottish Independence Referendum, but it is the flag of St George, the red cross on white, that has become particularly charged in recent times. For many English people, I imagine it no longer feels like an innocent symbol of celebration or identity. It has been taken up by those who see it as a marker of belonging that excludes rather than welcomes. In the current political climate, it has become linked to anger, division, and the language of the far right.

It feels to me like people in England now hesitate to display their own flag at all. It feels risky. What should be a gesture of belonging has become a potential political statement. A person who hangs a St George’s Cross from their window is often assumed to be making a declaration about race, immigration, or politics, even if all they want to do is support their national football team.

This uneasy relationship with national symbols says a great deal about the state of English identity. There is a defensiveness at its heart, a sense of being under threat or misunderstood. In that atmosphere, the flag becomes a weapon as much as a symbol, a way to draw a line between “us” and “them.”

That is what makes the Danish example so interesting. The Dannebrog is not used as a weapon. It feels light, friendly, and open. It can appear at a birthday party, on a Xmas tree, a shop opening, or a small village celebration without anyone worrying about what message it sends. It is simply part of the shared fabric of life. Even foreigners living in Denmark adopt it, placing small paper flags on their children’s birthday cakes or using it to decorate a new home. It becomes part of belonging rather than a test of loyalty.

What fascinates me is how fragile that can be. A flag’s meaning is not fixed; it depends entirely on how people use it and what they allow it to represent. The same piece of cloth can mean celebration or hostility, depending on the context. It can invite or reject. In one country, a flag above the door might say, “welcome, come in.” In another, it might say, “you do not belong here.”

In that sense, flags are a mirror. They reflect not only national identity but also national mood. When a society is confident, comfortable, and outward-looking, its symbols tend to be gentle and inclusive. When a society is anxious or divided, its symbols grow sharper edges. They become rallying points for those who feel threatened, and they begin to exclude as much as they unite.

The question that lingers for me is whether Denmark’s inclusive flag culture can stay that way. As global politics becomes more polarised, and as debates about immigration, identity, and belonging grow louder, will even the Dannebrog begin to carry heavier meanings? Will the far right attempt to claim it, as they have done with the St George’s Cross in England? Or will the deep-rooted Danish habit of using it to celebrate life’s ordinary joys keep it safe from that kind of capture? I suspect the latter will be true.

Perhaps the best defence against the politicisation of a symbol is simply to keep using it for the reasons it was loved in the first place. The more people continue to raise the flag for birthdays, family reunions, and weddings, the harder it is for anyone to twist it into something ugly. The ordinary, joyful use of national symbols may be the strongest possible protection against those who would use them to divide.

Whenever you fly into Denmark you will come through the arrivals door to grannies and grandpas waving tiny Danish flags in anticipation of the arrival of their family members returning from some faraway place. I can't see a future where it means anything other than joy, than welcome. 

The Great Labrador Colour Swap

When we moved from Scotland to Denmark, I expected the obvious differences.

The language, the food, the small obsession Danes have with flags at every possible event.

What I didn’t expect was that even the dogs would change.

Specifically: the Labradors.

In Scotland, if you said "Labrador," you meant a golden one. I grew up in a suburban street of golden Labs ranging from blond to almost ginger but nothing darker. Big, friendly, slightly clumsy creatures with a permanently hopeful look and a tendency to shed a full extra dog’s worth of hair every week. The one across the road was bright enough that it used to wander over to us every Thursday as that was the day mum chucked out all the old biscuit crumbs to refill the tin with pristine custard creams.

They were the family dogs you saw everywhere: in parks, in back gardens, in the Andrex adverts with the mischievous golden Labrador puppy unravelling an entire house-worth of loo roll.

That was the image burned into all our brains. Golden = Labrador. Labrador = Golden. End of story.

Black Labs existed, of course — but they were somehow different. They were serious dogs. Gamekeepers’ dogs walked by men in tweed jackets and green wellies. Dogs that worked for a living, instead of stealing your toast and flattening the flowerbeds. They were the Labradors you weren’t allowed to pet without asking permission, and you definitely didn’t feed them sausages under the table in your holiday boarding house.

Fast forward to Denmark, and suddenly I find myself in an alternate universe. Here, almost all the Labradors are black.

It’s like someone flipped the colour dial when we crossed the North Sea. At first, I thought it was just coincidence, but no, walk through any Danish town, and you’ll see them: sleek, shiny black Labs everywhere, walking with impressive discipline beside their owners, looking ready to herd a thousand invisible sheep at a moment’s notice.

Golden Labs? Practically an endangered species. In fact, until my neighbour took in a rescue one a couple of years ago (to replace her black Lab that had just died) I had seen none in Denmark, and he is still the only one I have met in nearly six years.

Apparently, in Denmark, black Labradors are the default. The norm.

Meanwhile in Scotland, we clearly went for the model that specialised in chasing after ice cream vans and leaping into muddy ponds for no reason at all, when not unravelling loo roll, that is.

It’s one of those tiny cultural differences no one warns you about when you emigrate. You expect the official stuff, healthcare systems, driving rules, baffling types of dairy products, but you don't expect even the basic dog settings to be changed behind your back.

One day you’re living in a land of golden Labs with wayward spirits and a fondness for rolling in dead fish. The next, you’re surrounded by sleek black professionals who look like they could submit a tax return if you handed them a laptop.

The loaf of life...

 or as I prefer to call it, the great rugbrød conspiracy!

It first happened not long after I moved here. As a foreigner, you get offered free language lessons to help you integrate better... in fact that isn't strictly true, you actually get offered them if you move here from abroad, which amused me no end given my Danish husband was offered the very same 'learn Danish course' on arrival after his nearly two decades in Scotland, which was fairly amusing given he was moving here to take up a post as a senior consultant on the Danish Retskrivningsordbog at Dansk Sprognævn, that's kind of like the Danish equivalent of the Académie Française! So, if they'd taken to employing folk with minimal Danish, the country was in deep shit!

So, there I was, a few weeks in to my new course and my teacher, a woman in here early 40s, was trying to get us all to try speaking Danish to each other 'What do you have for lunch in your own countries, other than the rye bread?' was her prompt!

This seemed like a weird question to me, so I replied that we don't tend to eat rye bread in Scotland. She literally gasped and the question escaped her lips: how have you survived into adulthood? She was entirely serious! This teacher had already mentioned she was married to a GP, had three kids and a university degree and yet she genuinely believed that not eating rye bread was so detrimental to one's health that the mere survival into adulthood was not guaranteed without it! 

It's a strange little country, so mono-cultural, so self-confident, so trusting. If you are told by the authorities that rye bread is not just good for your health but necessary to survival, you don't question it. When holidaying in France, Spain, or Thailand, noticing the lack of it on the menu doesn't make you question this received idea, but you simply assume the French, Spanish and Thai parents are still packing their little cherub's lunchboxes with the product gleaned from god knows where because it sure isn't on the supermarket shelves!

My kids have testified to the fact that almost all their classmates bring rye bread with either salami, pâté, or mackerel paste for lunch every day and generally moan about not liking it particularly but knowing they have no choice but to eat it! In the same breath they chastise my kids for being so unhealthy as to have a cheese and baguette sandwich or maybe some leftover macaroni cheese with them for lunch. 

Danish teenagers happily drink, smoke, vape, use snuff, but still accept that for the sake of their health a daily slice of rye bread is a must!

Thomas says his workplace is the same.

I recently spent some months working as a supply teacher in a nursery for kids aged around 10 months to 6 years. Every single day these kids' lunchboxes were 95% identical, despite the fact that the parents had no contact with each other, such is the homogenous nature of this country, outside the big cities at least. And they sure as hell didn't resemble anything you would have found back in my kids' Kirkhill Primary days. There were no crisps, chocolate bars or similar. The lunch was rye bread with one of the three toppings above, occasionally rye bread with a slice of fig on top, carrot sticks, slices of red pepper (never green, yellow, or orange), a handful of nuts, usually Brazil, some uncooked fresh peas, grapes or raisins, occasionally a piece of cheese, and maybe a yogurt, extra low fat. If they had no teeth yet, a few boiled potatoes may be chucked in for good measure. In the infant room I had babies who could say rugbrød med leverpostej (rye bread with pâté) before they could pronounce their own name!

The other teachers would tell them to eat their rye bread before starting on the smaller snacks, without even checking they had rye bread, it was simply a given!

I suddenly realised how much my kids stick out as foreigners with their flask of leftover rogan josh, and how hard it will be for any of them to settle down here with a fully native Dane and have a family with them. All Danes just seem to know this is the only acceptable lunch and create it spontaneously, while my three 'Danish' kids would need bribed to eat a lunch like that and I simply can't see them falling into line if they one day become parents themselves.

And I just turned 57 without eating more than one slice of rye bread a year! Astounding!

Koldskål, ymer and other weird things

I've mentioned before the dearth of product selection in all standard-sized local Danish supermarkets. The exception to this (other than liquorice!) is milk products. The refrigerated milk selection, even of the smallest Danish supermarket is mind-blowing if you are not au fait with their terminology, not to mention the fact that they love to package almost everything in 1 litre Tetra Pak cartons that look practically identical.

From Scotland, I'm used to my milk coming (colour-coded) blue (full-fat), green (semi-skimmed) and red (skimmed) in large 3+ litre plastic cartons, my yogurt in pots and my cream in tubs. But here you'd better be good at reading!

Let’s start with mælk (that's milk in Danish). You’ve got sødmælk (it means sweet milk but is actually whole milk), which is pretty much your blue carton friend from back home. Then there's letmælk (light milk which turns out to be semi-skimmed), and let’s not forget skummetmælk (skimmed milk), but now enter minimælk—the slightly mysterious cousin in the milk family. It’s basically a low-fat option that hovers somewhere between skummetmælk and letmælk, but even after five years I often forget whether mini or skummet is the bottom of the chain! 

Next up, you’ve got the yogurt products. They, again are standing to attention in the same 1 litre cartons. You have your bog-standard natural yogurt (that often comes in a carton identical to the sødmælk above), and the flavoured equivalents that are usually confined to strawberry, vanilla, fruits of the forest, and pear and banana. But standing beside that you find ymer (a slightly thicker, tangy yogurt that’s practically a national treasure) and tykmælk, a slightly thicker (but not as thick as ymer) soured milk that’s not just for baking but also makes a mean drink on a hot day. As far as I can tell, you are meant to eat ymer with ymerdrys - a crunchy, sweet topping made from a mix of dried, liquidised, toasted rye bread and brown sugar, (I kid you not) which surprisingly, is actually quite nice, though I actually prefer ymerdrys on tykmælk. That's probably sacrilegious to a Dane but I am too scared to ask! And I have no idea what you are actually meant to do with tykmælk. This is where it doesn't help that Thomas was brought up by a German, who also has little idea what to do with all these options! Of course, there's also skyr (the Icelandic cousin that’s taken the world by storm—because who doesn’t love a good health trend?).

Next up we mustn't forget about A38, a deliciously creamy fermented milk product that has been a staple in Danish kitchens for ages. I've been here five years and I still am not entirely sure what you are meant to do with A38, or for that matter what happened to A1 thru A37! It’s perfect for breakfast or as a snack, often enjoyed with a sprinkle of sugar or fruit according to the packaging, but I am not sure how it differs from Ymer or Tykmælk.

You can also find a selection of koldskål, a cold lemony buttermilk dessert yogurt that’s perfect for summer, often served with crunchy biscuits (kammerjunkere) or fresh fruit. And let’s not overlook kærnemælk (standard buttermilk).

And don't even get me started on Ryeost, a really weird, smokey, cheese that always looks to me like a cheesecake, especially when I am fooled into thinking the caraway seeds on top are chocolate sprinkles! I made the mistake of buying it to have with my coffee, but only once! I love cheesecake, but despite cheese being my favourite food, this soft, thick, smokey version does nothing for me.

So, while the rest of the supermarket might leave you scratching your head and wondering why the selection is so small, the milk section will have you singing its praises. Just remember to practise your Danish dairy vocabulary; otherwise, you might end up with a trolley full of something that looks like milk but tastes like a weird yogurt-cheese hybrid. Poor Léon still often accidentally puts yogurt in his coffee first thing before he's fully awake!

Happy 30th!

There’s something peculiar going on in Denmark when it comes to 30th birthdays. I've been watching them now for a few years, and it is seriously odd, here on Funen at least.

Apparently, when a Dane hits the big three-oh, it’s not enough to throw a party or give a nice, sensible gift. No, instead, they mark this milestone with what can only be described as giant, eccentric sculptures. These are usually massive, almost always jokey-obscene, and bizarrely intricate creations, often made from old bits of scrap metal or discarded machinery. And they’re not exactly subtle, either. Plonked right on the end of the birthday boy or girl’s driveway, these creations are left out in full view for weeks, if not months, as though they’re some sort of public art installation.

Now, I’m not entirely sure who’s responsible for these sculptures. Do friends and family secretly build them to surprise the poor soul who’s turning 30? Or does the birthday boy/girl actually request one of these arty monstrosities to mark their entry into a new decade? Either way, it’s quite the spectacle. I’ve seen a fair few since moving here, and they never fail to raise a few questions. My first encounter was a two-metre-tall man made entirely out of metal drums, complete with a beer can in his hand, which was displayed proudly on the main road to Søndersø. Sadly, I couldn’t stop for a photo as it was on a busy road, but it’s burned into my memory all the same.

Then there was another one, a real masterpiece in the art of scrapyard chic. It was a wrecked car painted in all sorts of garish colours, splashed with rude slogans, and lacking anything resembling wheels or an engine. This was on the road into central Odense, positioned just so every passer-by would have no choice but to take in its full glory. I swear at first I thought some joy riders had stolen, vandalised, and abandoned a car, only to realise that Danes just don't do that and it was actually 'art'. No one else seemed remotely fazed by it.

As I began to realise these weren't one-offs, but traditions, I decided to start making a conscious effort, whenever it was safe, to actually stop and photograph examples of Danish birthday 'art'. 

The first one I snapped was parked outside a house in a nearby village. It was a large, rather rude, pink... let’s call it a "creation," made from what appeared to be various car parts and hoses, joined together in a way that made it look suspiciously like it was trying to make a point, if you catch my drift.

 The next one was a huge metal structure, made out of an old caravan no less, in a tiny village called Sønder Esterbølle – a quaint, rural place full of thatched cottages and windmills you’d think would be immune to such antics. Yet, there it sat, in full view on someone’s drive, for the entire summer, as if it were just another garden gnome.

Honestly, it’s baffling. There’s absolutely no shame about these things here; it’s as if these sculptures are perfectly ordinary. Even in the most picturesque little villages, with colourful cottages and cobblestone streets, you’ll spot a massive, anatomically questionable sculpture on someone’s lawn, and no one bats an eyelid. It’s just part of life here, apparently. Maybe it’s the Danes' famous sexual nonchalance – they’re simply unembarrassed by things that would make most Brits blush. In the UK, people often thought I was 'way too European' on this front, but I think even I would draw the line at an orgy of sex dolls amongst my dahlias!

As for the “why” behind it all? That’s still a mystery. I’d love to know if there’s some hidden meaning or if it’s just a bit of fun that’s got wildly out of hand. Thomas had told me of people gifting each other pepper mills for their 30th, back in the 90s as it signified you had been left on the shelf, but how pepper mills morphed into 2 metre tall scrap metal sex sculptures in the space of two decades is truly puzzling. Maybe it’s their way of taking the edge off turning 30, reminding each other that they’re still young at heart, even if the calendar is saying otherwise. Or maybe it’s an elaborate way of poking fun at friends who are reluctantly edging out of their twenties.

In any case, I’ve decided I’m going to start a collection – of photos, that is. I’ll be documenting these sculptures as I come across them. Who knows? Perhaps there’s a national sculptor of 30th birthday oddities out there making a mint off these things. Or maybe each one is a unique, one-off creation crafted by mates with too much free time and access to a welding torch. Maybe I could start a business selling sex dolls for this very purpose...🤔

One thing’s for sure: I’m quite relieved I was already way past 30 when I moved here. (Though I'm seriously hoping you don't come home to two of these buggers on your driveway when you turn 60!) 

Anyway, hats off to the Danes; they certainly know how to make a statement.

Going forward I will add any new birthday sculptures I find on my travels, below with the date and location: