I’ve referred to “The Danish Year” before on How to Live in Denmark. It’s a series of events that are simply expected to happen every year in Denmark, even if they aren’t formal holidays. In 2025 I’m going to try to do a podcast every month about aspects of the Danish year, and how they fit into the overall context of where Denmark is coming from, and where it’s going.
September is when fall sports season starts in Denmark. The badminton league begins, so does volleyball and basketball and hockey.
Most importantly, the handball season kicks off, and while I’m not a handball fan myself, I always know when that season is underway because my otherwise mild-mannered downstairs neighbor begins screaming at his flatscreen, cheering on or scolding Denmark’s handball girls or handball boys. The teams are equally popular in Denmark.
Team handball was invented in Denmark – and like design, it’s a national passion. Danish teams have won several World Championships and many Olympic Gold Medals.
Given the international competition, it’s harder for little Denmark to win a gold medal in football (soccer), although the Danish national team did win a European championship in 1992, something any Danish man over 40 will be happy to discuss with you in great detail.
Even so, there though there are more than 300,000 registered football players in Denmark if you count amateur, pro, and semi-pro teams. The population of Denmark is 6 million. That means one out of every 20 Danes is on a football team.
Sports money comes from outside Denmark
Danish athletes are not particularly rich, and the ones who do make big money have tapped into markets outside of Denmark. The most famous is badminton player Viktor Axelsen. Since badminton is most popular in Asia, Viktor Axelsen learned fluent Mandarin Chinese. There are a lot of endorsements in the Chinese market.
The golfing Højgaard twins, Rasmus and Nicolai, make their money on the international golf circuits, in particular the PGA.
And Tour de France winner Jonas Vingegaard makes his money not just in France, but also via international endorsements, although his biggest contract is with a Danish company, the building materials supplier Bygma.
Spare time sports
Many Danes do sports in their spare time. A bike ride through Copenhagen wouldn’t be complete without a middle-aged Lycra lout who thinks he’s Jonas Vingegaard speeding past you in the bike lanes, sometimes screaming “Bagfra!” or “I’m coming up behind you!” Besides criminals and welfare cheats, these are the least liked men in Denmark.
Many Danes are involved with what’s often described as hygge sports, where the win or the loss isn’t as important as the beers with your buddies or pasta with your girls afterwards. These leagues cover the entire lifespan – old boys football clubs or old girls rowing teams can keep you fit long past retirement age – and they often start in childhood.
Schools in Denmark have physical education classes – under the old Viking word idraet – but they rarely have school sports teams.
Sports are played through clubs, mostly amateur clubs, which is nice for the kids, because if they don’t have many friends at school they can make different friends at their sports club.
These clubs are part of a huge network connected to Team Denmark, which is a government project to create Denmark’s future sports stars.
Seeking out athletes but not intellectuals
It’s always funny to me that there is so much support for elite sport development in a country that celebrates the Law of Jante. Under the Law of Jante, the idea is that no one should think themselves better than anyone else. You see this in Danish working culture, and you also see it in the educational system.
Smart kids in Denmark don’t get a boost – they’re expected to just attend ordinary classes and help their slower classmates. There are very few gifted and talented programs, and unlike Germany or the UK, Denmark doesn’t academically track children when they’re 10 or 11, sending some to more challenging academic programs.
In Denmark, you can get away with messing around and doing very little in school until your second year of high school – gymnasium – age 17 or 18, and then buckle down and find yourself in medical school or international business, two of the most sought-after university programs.
But, in sport, Denmark begins looking for talent very early.
The local sports clubs work with Team Denmark to create a pipeline of talented kids.
Team Denmark selects sports Denmark can win
Team Denmark, which is part of the culture ministry, has been around for forty years, but it constantly updates which sports it supports. Being practical Danes, they aim for sports in which little Denmark has a good chance of big success.
Right now, that’s badminton, handball, cycling, plus the various sports played on or in the water – sailing, kayaking, swimming, rowing. Denmark has a long tradition of sports that involve boats and water. With all its little islands and fjords, it has more coastline than India.
Pipeline from kids’ clubs to elite sports schools
By age 13, these kids are offered places in talent centers or elite sports schools, and when they’re 15 and ready for secondary school, there will be an elite sport track that gives them flexibility to train and compete. Danish universities also offer flexibility for the athletes of Team Denmark when it comes to papers and exams.
Some companies even offer part-time internships for Denmark’s elite athletes, so they can keep their civilian career on track while pursuing their sport.
Jante Law returns
Of course, once they’ve succeeded at that sport, Jante Law kicks in again. Danish athletes who win things are expected to give credit to their teammates, to their trainers, to the collective effort. To say things like, well, “I was third, I got the bronze, but I could have easily been fourth.”
They’re also expected to stay in Denmark and pay Danish taxes. Viktor Axelsen found himself rather unpopular when he moved to Dubai. His excuse was the better flight connections to badminton matches Asia, as well as the dry weather being good for his asthma, but everyone knew the difference between 52% income tax on top earners in Denmark and 0% in Dubai probably weighed in Viktor’s decision.
The ideal Danish elite athlete is probably Michael Laudrup, who played football at the highest levels throughout Europe in the 1990s, but was always very humble about his skills. After he retired came back to Denmark, where he now runs a wine business, does some Danish TV commentary, and no doubt pays substantial Danish taxes.
This is sporting success in one of the most egalitarian countries in the world.
