Contemplating Denmark
Life in Denmark through the eyes of a new Scottish immigrant...
Friday 15 March 2024
How do you get to know a Scandinavian?
Thursday 29 February 2024
Shop etiquette
Anna got herself a wee job in Lidl out of school hours about six weeks ago. After a few training sessions and some shelf stacking she was finally the main checkout person last weekend and she decided it was a bit of a culture shock!
Firstly, she knows it's Scandinavia, but still can't understand the multiple bags of salt liquorice bought by individual customers and she was in shock when one 80+ year old granny bought 38 bags of it and nothing else! They even ran out of liquorice-flavoured alcoholic shots last Saturday afternoon. How can that even be a thing?🤮
The Danish pastries are a cultural divider too. Anna's not a very sweet girl, preferring savoury offerings so hasn't fully learned the names of all the different Danish baked goods. She says people look at her as if she's landed from the moon when she doesn't know her hindbærsnitter from her spandauer. They cannot conceive that someone lives in Denmark, looks and sounds Danish but doesn't know such items. I guess it would be the equivalent of a teenager on the checkout in Govan with a very Glasgow accent asking the customer whether a tatty scone was in fact a tatty scone or haggis!
Contrary to my experience in Danish supermarkets when checkout staff and customers alike ignore each other as best they can, the checkout operator of course needs to tell them the sum owed, but that counts as a conversation here in this land of few words, Anna finds the customers positively chatty by Danish standards! The mere donning of a badge stating she's a trainee, or ny kollega, has the older ones addressing her as pigebarn, literary girl child but equivalent of sweetie or similar, and offering all sorts of encouragement, advice and anecdotes about how hard new jobs can be. It plays into my theory that Danes aren't actually as anti-social as they come across, they are simply much more in need for an in into a conversation than I am used to from back home. I'm tempted to stick a ny dansker badge on and walk up and down Odense main street to see if I can finally make a friend over here!
But as a Scottish person, the thing that has surprised Anna most about Danes is their honesty. Scots are an honest nation too for the most part but I think it is more in our psyche to be honest to individuals than corporations. If someone drops a tenner, of course we pick it up and alert them to the fact that they have done so, we'd usually hand in a lost phone or wallet, but if we notice we've been minimally undercharged on a receipt, we'd just take it to be the sign of a good day, justifying ourselves that we've certainly been overcharged on an equal number of occasions. That's my Glasgow experience anyway. But not here. If Anna accidentally puts through a baguette as white rather than brown, thus undercharging the customer by about 30p, they actually come back and ask to be debited for the full amount! She says this or the equivalent happened half a dozen times last weekend. Mind blown!
I'm sure her wee job will lead to further cultural observations in the future so watch this space!😀
Wednesday 17 January 2024
The Danish word Fuck
I was a lexicographer for over twenty years so I know everything there is to know about compiling the entry fuck in English for a bilingual or monolingual dictionary. From the smallest pocket dictionary to the largest several-volume tome, I have had to analyse fuck. And to be perfectly honest, it really isn't all that interesting! It usually means almost nothing! Had she not been cremated, my old granny would be spinning in her grave at the thought of her granddaughter being paid to discuss the nuances of fuck in meetings, given she told me once she would never let that disgraceful word cross her lips!
Analysing the use of the word fuck in Denmark is quite interesting. There seems to me to be an inverse correlation between how good a Dane is at English and how bad they are at getting the nuances and the register of fuck when speaking English. Poor English speakers tend to avoid it, whereas decent English speakers take the now Danish word fuck and transpose it back into English as if the two fucks are direct equivalents, which they certainly are not!- '3 minutes late for nursery today - fuck!'
- 'Foggy weather today - fuck!'
- Teachers happily use the English word fuck in front of their class to express mild annoyance, even when the kids are as young as 7 or 8. Things like 'Fuck I forgot the marker pens for the whiteboard, I'll be back in two minutes'. That certainly didn't happen back in Newton Mearns!
- School kids therefore use it back to the teacher and no one bats an eyelid. Imagine the teacher announces something along the lines of 'Sorry kids, I'm gonna have to cancel the art lesson today', he would fully expect the kids to reply 'Awwwwh, fuck, that's annoying!' In Danish fuck really is like damn, or milder still like awwwh. One of the things my youngest struggled most with when we came here was remembering that it was absolutely fine, and even expected, that you would say fuuuuuck when speaking in Danish if you were disappointed in class but you sure as hell needed to remember not to say it to granny on visits back home if she was two seconds late passing you the ketchup!
- Often on news reports and documentaries on prime time TV again people being interviewed use fuck at the drop of a hat. Here are a couple of examples from recent TV: Today we have had severe flooding in the north of the country. We're here in Aalborg with a local businessman Lars Jensen can you describe how it affected you? Oh yes, I got up and came downstairs to find the cellar flooded, I thought Fuuuuuck! This is a completely normal broadcast. You even get it for surprise. Here's another example: We are getting reports that the Queen just indicated she intends to abdicate, we're here with Mette Nielsen who works in the local Coop. What did you think when you heard the news Mette Nielsen? Well, I just turned to my boyfriend and went fuck I wasn't expecting that!
- Watching the Danish version of the Great British Bake-off, someone screws something up every week; they burn their cake, their icing is too runny, whatever, again old ladies weep fuck in unison on prime time telly, before being comforted by the judges or the presenter.
Tuesday 16 January 2024
Farewell Daisy, Hello Fred
I'm not sure whether this post belongs on my normal blog, or here as it is as much about my weekend as it is about the quirks of Denmark. Thought I'd jazz it up a bit for here so as not to bore anyone who happens upon both!
Well, would you believe it? There's a new monarch in town.
So, picture this: it's New Year's Eve, and I find myself sprawled on the couch. Why, you ask? Well, some nasty flu bug decided to crash my Christmas party, and I'd barely set foot outside. Now, normally, I'd give the Queen's speech a hard pass, but there I was, a captive audience. Quite the compliment, considering I've never once watched the UK monarch's Christmas speech. Being a good Scottish republican, you know, the kind that doesn't sit down to watch Lizzie – or probably Charlie these days – address the nation.
Now, the first year I landed in Denmark, I did my homework for Danish class by tuning in to the Danish Queen's speech. Old Queen Magrethe, unlike most Danes, speaks at a pace even a sloth would find leisurely. A foreigner's dream, really – comprehension-wise, at least. Fast forward to the end of a rather lengthy and not exactly riveting speech, and she casually drops the bombshell that she's stepping down in a fortnight. Mind you, no one's abdicated in Denmark for 878 years. Cue Denmark going into meltdown.
First, there's a good half-hour of stunned silence, as if she'd actually dropped dead mid-speech. But hey, they love their Queen Daisy like bees love their queen, so within 30 minutes, the hive mind decides it's the best thing ever. Monarchy support skyrockets to 80%, with only one in five Danes thinking twice about splurging tax money on royal luxuries – oops, I mean service to the nation. Equality, anyone? Apparently, some are just more equal than others...
Fast forward to last Sunday, coronation day. Feeling all Danish, I decided to grab a cake to celebrate. Unfortunately, this entire island had the same idea, and my go-to award-winning bakery had sold out before I'd even got dressed.
But I'm not one to be defeated by a cake shortage, so off I went to the big Coop bakery. Ghost town. Almost sold out. While the rest of Denmark glued themselves to the telly or, better yet, camped out in front of Parliament for the royal show, I was on a cake mission.
The bowing and curtsying? King Frederik bowing to his own mother? My kids don't pull that stunt with me! As she exits, she declares 'Gud bevare Kongen!' (God save the King). Not exactly how my mother used to take her leave of us after Sunday dinner back when we lived in Scotland! It's all a bit unrelatable. Maybe it's monarchy in general, not just this one, that's the issue.
This little country feels more like a clan than a nation. As a foreigner, I could see the vibes, but I couldn't feel them. I didn't know how to. Why is this family different? The new King's my age, has four kids instead of five – are we really that different? Apparently so, but I'm not sure how or why! I felt like an outsider watching a national family party I hadn't been invited to mentally. I secretly wonder if the new Queen, also a foreigner, felt a bit on the outside, or maybe it's easier when the crowd's going wild for you, the state's filling your bank account, and you get citizenship as a wedding gift, instead of perpetually climbing Everest to a citizenship that at my age is all but unattainable.
Come Monday, kids at school were gushing like a family member threw the party of the century. Except for my youngest – 'No one mentioned it, Mum. They weren't interested.' Rebellion at 14, back in the fold by 20, maybe?
Wednesday 11 October 2023
School trips - Danish style
I remember a teacher friend from the UK once telling me she felt quite stressed whenever she took the kids abroad on a school trip because she was expected to be with them 24/7, or follow their whereabouts using an iPad tracker program whenever they were out of her sight.
Léon's off today on a two-week school trip to the south of Spain, where he will be living with a Spanish host family and attending Spanish school. But the Danish approach is quite different to what I know from Scotland.
- a train ticket from Odense to Copenhagen Central
- a train ticket from Copenhagen Central to Kastrup airport
- a plane ticket to Brussels
- a plane ticket from Brussels to Malaga leaving three hours later
- a note of where in Malaga to go to meet the Spanish teacher from Colmenar high school
- and the same in reverse for 2 weeks later
Wednesday 22 February 2023
What's in a name?
I remember singing Incy Wincy Spider to the kids when they were little, at bedtime. Oh, I know that one too, said Thomas and he happily sang:
Friday 3 February 2023
Superabundant taxidermy
Is it a Denmark thing? Is it maybe a Funen thing? What is it with primary schools and their endless displays of stuffed dead animals? Everything from hares, to birds, to every type of rodent you can expect to find under the sun, the Danish sun at least? All with those creepy beady eyes staring maniacally at nothing in a vaguely menacing manner. Perhaps Denmark accidentally trained too many taxidermists back in the 50s and 60s and needed to find something for them to do? I'm puzzled!
How do you get to know a Scandinavian?
I saw this on Facebook the other day; a Swedish friend from Scotland had uploaded it. It is so sweet, but both endearing and deeply distur...
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I remember a teacher friend from the UK once telling me she felt quite stressed whenever she took the kids abroad on a school trip because s...
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Anna got herself a wee job in Lidl out of school hours about six weeks ago. After a few training sessions and some shelf stacking she was fi...
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I saw this on Facebook the other day; a Swedish friend from Scotland had uploaded it. It is so sweet, but both endearing and deeply distur...