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 disturbing too, if like me you have somehow landed in the strange place that is Scandinavia.
Connecting to Danes is not something I have figured out how to master, well other than the obvious one that is! And it feels almost as if the five year mark is the point where you should throw in the towel! Up till this year, I have thought through different strategies on how to connect, this year, I have kind of reached the stage where I think 'Meh, what's the point in trying, there's always zoom?'
Sometimes they come across as stand-offish, at other times painfully shy. To say they are hard work, from someone with my cultural background at least, is an understatement, so I found this tongue-in-cheek videoclip interesting. I guess they probably find me too in their face and difficult too.
I come from a culture, like this Kurdish guy, where people also 'talk too much'. We chat to people in queues in shops, on public transport, at the school gate, in the doctor's waiting room, you name it. Meaningless and superficial conversations become deep and meaningful if they are the only human contact you get, and I am left with many questions from how Danes get any kind of input and how they make friends or acquaintances? Was I simply too late to the party? Do Danes stick strictly to the people they know from childhood, adolescence or their student years and thus shut down the idea of making any new friends in their 50s? Do they only talk to family and colleagues perhaps?
Because Thomas joined a workplace which had been transferred (forcibly) from Copenhagen to a small village nearly 2.5 hours away, his colleagues mainly work from home, and live so far away that no afterwork socialising occurs, so he can't say what's normal in the workplace here either. And we have no family within a couple of hours of us, so no chance of meeting people through them either.
I was so used to, from home, chatting to other parents, either at the school gate, or when picking and dropping kids off at each others' houses. We'd often invite another parent in for a coffee when they came to pick someone up from a sleepover, but here from the outset parents happily dropped their children at the end of the driveway without even meeting us, which I found quite odd. There seemed to be no need to check out the weird foreign family who'd invited your 9 year-old to dinner or overnight, no curiosity, and no worries, just blind trust.
By the time Amaia had been visiting and having sleepovers with a classmate for 3 years, I had still never met any of her friends' mothers. Then last year both Amaia and another child she was close to signed up to the same summer camp activity which was taking place in August. I felt like the man on the video that day.
First I got Amaia to text saying I was happy to drive both kids as I was passing the other's house en route. I'd have jumped at the chance had she offered but the friend replied that her mum was happy to take her separately. Fair enough, maybe she was going somewhere anyway... The activities were taking place in a school I didn't know, so I found the class where the kids had to go, and sent Amaia in. At that moment her mate arrived too. We bade them farewell and both turned simultaneously to walk the 250m back to our cars.
We walked out keeping apace but saying nothing... a silence I, as a Scot, found painful, I am not sure if the Dane felt it too though. It suddenly occurred to me she might be reticent to speak as she didn't know whether I spoke Danish or not, so cunningly, I thought, I asked in Danish 'It's 4pm we've to come back for the girls, isn't it?' She simply replied in the affirmative. We walked on again with nothing but the chirping of the birds to accompany us, so I guess it wasn't my language ability that was the issue. 'What a summer,' I said, 'it's been so much colder than usual.' Again she barely looked at me, and continued with the merest of nods. Strangely though, she neither sped up, slowed down, nor faked a phone call to shake me off!
Jesus, this is hard work, I thought. By then I was finding the stoney silence and the walk side by side quite uncomfortable so like any good Scottish woman I descended into wittering on mindlessly in Danish 'July's been such a disappointment. We were in Spain for a couple of weeks and it just feels so cold after that. We were at a wedding last week, my nephew and his new wife, she's Canadian but her family's Indian, and I felt so sorry for all the guests who'd flown over for it as it was so chilly.' I paused again and probably looked pleadingly at her to engage, but nope! So I continued 'In fact we have a guest staying with us at the moment. She's a 15 year-old Spanish girl. You see my older daughter, not Anna who's also 15, I mean Charlotte, the one who is in her 20s. She used to be an au pair in Spain and she still helps the family with teaching their girls English, so now the oldest one is 15, the family wanted her to spend a month with an English-speaking family and here she is with us and she's never been north of Madrid in her life. Poor girl looks half frozen to death... In fact she's so cold all the time that I now know how to say "Madre mía, qué frío!"' Not even a smile, I swear! Finally my car was in sight just off to the left, and the other mum had still not said a single word to me, not one! 'That's me over there,' I said pointing at my people carrier, half relieved, half wondering if I was either the most boring person in the world or if my Danish was so diabolical, she hadn't understood a word. I mean she gave me absolutely nooooothing back! Finally, she replied 'Bye'. So she definitely wasn't mute! And I might add, I drove back home following her all the way, so it turned out she wasn't on her way out either!
Jesus, I mean really?! I guess I'd committed some kind of cultural faux pas to try to have an actual conversation with someone I didn't know, but whose kid was good friends with mine, but how are you meant to make acquaintances otherwise, I mean if you're not meant to chat? I have lived in other countries and found their culture so much easier to understand than this one. In fact I was in Spain at Xmas and I spoke more to Spaniards in five days than I have to Danes in five years despite the fact that my Spanish is not nearly as good as my Danish!
And this isn't a one-off. I have tried various ways of meeting people and I always feel not only that I am the only one talking but that everyone else is quietly hoping I'll soon shut up and bugger off so they can go back to whatever it is Danes do when I am not about!
I know it isn't, because Danes do genuinely seem to be nice, but to an outsider it feels like a lack of empathy. Back in Scotland I knew some first generation immigrants. I always imagined how they must feel miles from their home, their family, the places they knew and felt happy, struggling with a language that wasn't their own. I thought it almost my duty to help them out, knowing how much easier it would be for me to invite them in, chat to them, help them, than it would be for them to have to make all the moves.
I always thought till I moved here that I was an introvert. Now I am beginning to question that because I sure as hell seem to need more human contact than most people I have met here!
People, people who need people, are the luckiest people in the world…🎶
