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Podcasts, Stories about life in Denmark

The Little Match Girl and the Fur Industry: China and Denmark

One of the many things I do for a living is work as a voiceover, and one of my regular gigs is with a Danish company that makes high-end microphones. Frequently, they present their microphones to visiting customers from around the world, and my role is to be fitted out with six or seven different microphones at once – a headset microphone like Britney Spears wears, a necklace microphone like the ones on reality shows, a lapel microphone like newscasters wear, even an old fashioned tabletop microphone. Then I read a text while the company switches the various microphones on and off, so the customers can hear the difference between the different models.

When the customers are from China, I always choose to read a text from Hans Christian Andersen. Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales are extremely popular in China. Many Chinese read them as children. So, when I’m faced with a room full of Chinese microphone buyers, I usually read The Little Match Girl. The Little Match Girl, if you haven’t heard it lately, is a very sad story about a starving little girl on the streets of Copenhagen in the 19th century. She’s supposed to be selling matches to help support her family, but it’s winter and she’s so cold that she keeps lighting the matches to keep herself warm. In the end, they find her small, frail body frozen to death.

So, when I read this story, strapped into seven different microphones, I find that by the end these highly technical Chinese sound professionals are sniffling and sentimental, transported back to their younger days.

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May 28, 2014 by
Podcasts, Stories about life in Denmark

Danes and Norwegians: Bitter envy and brotherly love


Danes and Norwegians were part of the same country for hundreds of years, and they’re still family.

Although I’ve chosen to live in Denmark, I have a personal relationship with Norway. My grandmother’s family comes from Norway, and as my mother was growing up, her mother told her that our family was Norwegian royalty. 

Never mind that there was no modern Norwegian royalty until 1905, when the country became independent, and our family came to the U.S. thirty years before that. My mother grew up being told she was a lost Norwegian princess. I think it was something that her grandparents, who were immigrants, did to make their kids feel special.

Fast forward sixty years, and my mother and her sister, who would, of course, also have been a Norwegian princess, got a chance to visit Norway for the first time. My mother, who has a good sense of humor, wore a crown on the plane. She and her sister got crowns at a costume store and wore them on the SAS flight to Norway. She said the stewardesses really loved it. When they got off the plane, they did the royal wave. And they went to the Royal Palace and had their picture taken out front, wearing their crowns.

So, bottom line, I’m not sure the Mellish family is welcome in Norway anymore.

Family envy

Danes and Norwegians were part of the same country for hundreds of years, and they’re still family. Written Danish and written Norwegian are very similar – so similar that I once tried to find a Danish-Norwegian dictionary and was told there was no such thing. The spoken language is a little more different, but Danes and Norwegians can understand what the other is saying. 

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May 23, 2014 by
Stories about life in Denmark

Salam and Goddag: Muslims in Denmark

There’s a new mosque opening down the street from me this spring, a big one. It will be the first mosque with minarets in Denmark, although the minarets are legally prohibited from calling to prayer.

The people behind the mosque are doing everything they can to blend in with the local neighborhood – they even went to observe at a local church service a couple of Sundays ago. Given the Danes’ lack of interest in religion, they were probably the only ones there.

There are a lot of Muslims in Denmark, about 250,000 out of a population of five-and-a-half million, most of who have arrived here in the past 40 years.

And contrary to what the Danish right-wing parties might say, they’ve brought a lot of good things to Denmark, and not just Shwarma shops.

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May 12, 2014 by
Podcasts, Stories about life in Denmark

Summerhouse or dollhouse? What to expect if you’re invited to a Danish summer home

If you live in city or a big town in Denmark, you may notice that the weekends are getting very quiet just about now.

The streets outside my home in Copenhagen are empty. The streetlights just change from red to green and back again, but no cars ever pull up. Nobody comes to cross the street. It’s a little like a scene a movie right after the zombie apocalypse.

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May 11, 2014 by
Stories about life in Denmark

Raising Kids in Denmark: Social engineering begins in day care

Denmark is a pretty good place to raise children.

Working hours are short, and it’s perfectly OK to leave work at 3 or 4 o’clock to pick up your kids. There’s a good system for early childhood health. A nurse visits your home when your child is a baby. Later, there are regular checkups with a doctor.If your child has the sniffles, you can take off work and stay home with her. The first two days are paid time off.

And, of course, there’s the day care system. It’s not free, but it’s reasonably priced, and it’s nice to be able to drop off your kid in a safe place with trained people while you go to work.

In some countries, there’s a lot of controversy about whether very young children should be in day care or at home with their parents. Not in Denmark. 97% of kids go to day care, even the children of the Royal Family. Even the future king, currently known as ten-year-old Prince Christian, went to day care.

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April 12, 2014 by
In the Media

‘Danskernes venskab er specialt’: DI Business Magazine

Danes are loyal, good friends, but their friendships are full of obligations, Kay Xander Mellish says in an interview with DI Business Magazine, published by DI Danske Industri (The Danish Confederation of Industry.)

“Danish friendship is deep and that’s a wonderful thing, but it also means that it can be difficult to become friends with a Dane,” Kay explains.

Read about more about Danish cultural differences or download a PDF copy of the article ‘Danskernes venskab er specialt.’

April 4, 2014 by
Stories about life in Denmark

Danes and Cars: Why Real Men Drive Bicycles

final_danes and carsUnlike their German neighbors, who are passionate about cars and driving, Danes have a slightly bashful relationship with cars.

There is a certain sense that the driver should be slightly ashamed to be driving a car at all. Real Danes drive bicycles.

This is partly a tenet of environmentalism – the Danish national religion – and partly because of an egalitarian conviction that no one in Denmark should have anything unless everyone else has one. The Danish government subscribes to both of these principles, and makes car ownership as difficult as possible.

Danes and cars
The purchase of a new car in Denmark sets off a 180% sales tax – in other words, a $20,000 sedan will cost you $50,000 to drive off the lot. This is the only tax you’ll ever hear Danish working-class people – greengrocers, carpenters, Page 9 topless models (who tend to be on the socialist side) – complain about.

Heavy gasoline taxes, which were recently increased, bring the price of a gallon of fuel up to around $8 a gallon, even though the country is largely burning its own North Sea oil.

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March 13, 2014 by
Stories about life in Denmark

The Things I Do Double: Thoughts on Dual Nationality in Denmark

There was big news this week for foreigners in Denmark. It looks like dual nationality in Denmark will soon be permitted. Previously, if you wanted to be a Danish citizen, you had to give up citizenship in your home country.

Meanwhile Danes who had moved abroad, say to the US or Australia, and became citizens there had to give up their Danish citizenship.

There’s now been a proposal to get rid of all that. It hasn’t been finally approved, but all the Danish parties say they’ll vote for it, with the exception of our anti-foreigner friends in the Danish People’s Party.

Why I’ll apply
Now having been here for 14 years, I will probably apply for Danish citizenship. I realize I’ll have to do a lot of studying about Danish history, and learn things like the difference between King Christian the Fourth and King Christian the Seventh.

But that’s true of any country. I’m sure people wanting to be American citizens have to learn the difference between, say, George Washington and George Bush.

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March 12, 2014 by
Podcasts, Stories about life in Denmark

Danish Stereotypes: Copenhagen snobs and ‘peasant butts’ from Jylland

Danes have stereotypes about each other, something that amazed me when I first arrived here. You have five and a half million people, and you’re dividing yourselves into groups!

But Danes themselves imagine a big difference between people from Sjelland, the island with Copenhagen on it, and Jylland, the bigger part of Denmark that is connected to Germany.

As the stereotype goes, people from Jylland are seen as quiet, reliable, trustworthy, and likely to marry young and start families soon after. They have distinctive and sometimes impenetrable accents, particularly the ones from Sonderjylland, near the German border. ‘Jyske’ people love the Royal Family and are much more likely to serve in the army or the police forces.

And people from Jylland are also sometimes seen as stubborn and very tight with money. They want to drive a hard bargain.

I can testify that there is some truth to this. I occasionally sell my daughter’s outgrown clothes and toys on the Den Blå Avis, Denmark’s version of eBay, and I’ve almost stopped selling to buyers in Jylland.

First, they want a discount, then they want me to arrange the cheapest shipping possible in a manner that causes me the greatest amount of bother. When the object arrives, they inevitably find some small flaw and want all their money back.

All this for items that cost less than 100 kroner, often less than 50 kroner. I think the thrill of the getting a better deal matters more than the few kroner they save.

But maybe they’re just responding to the stereotype about people from Copenhagen, which is that they look down on Jylland’s bonderøve – literally, ‘peasant butts’ – and do their best to cheat them out of their hard-earned money.

I don’t know if there are many actual Danish cheaters on the streets of Copenhagen these days – I think pickpocketing and fraud games have been outsourced to poverty-stricken  immigrants – but people from Copenhagen are still seen as slick and slightly dishonest.

From the Jyske point of view, Danes from Copenhagen are Københavnersnuder – Copenhagen snouts, who are smart-asses, fast-talkers, and prone to exaggeration. Everything in Copenhagen is, in their eyes, the biggest and the best in Denmark. Kobenhavnersnuder wear odd, overpriced eyeglasses, and the men wear Hugo Boss suits.

Kobenhavnersnuder have jobs that are non-jobs, like Senior Communications Consultant or B-to-B SEO specialist. By comparison, people from Jylland have real jobs – like pig farmer, or Lego designer.

Of course, there are so many people from Jylland living in Copenhagen these days that the stereotypes have started to dissipate a bit.

As Denmark becomes a more international country, maybe that will happen with national stereotypes as well.

Kay Xander Mellish books

Buy Kay’s books about Denmark on Amazon, Saxo, Google Books, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble Nook, or via our webshop.

Image mashup copyright Kay Xander Mellish 2024

Read also: Denmark is not just Copenhagen: Exploring the Danish countryside

March 9, 2014 by