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Launched in 2013, the “How to Live in Denmark” podcast is the longest-running podcast about living in Denmark in English. It covers every aspect of living in Denmark and Danish life, including moving to Denmark, adjusting to life in Denmark, Danish customs, Danish weather, Danish customs, and Danish people, all with gentle humor.

With nearly 150 short episodes, there is plenty to listen to as you pack for your move to Denmark, relax in your Danish summerhouse, or survive the long, dark Danish winter.

Gækkebrev Danish traditions vs Digitalization
Podcasts, Stories about life in Denmark, The Danish Year

March, Gækkebreve, and the things lost in Digital Denmark: The Danish Year Part 3

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.

“Am I being threatened?”

An international professional newly arrived in Denmark asked me this when he received a note in his apartment building mailbox. Now, this alone is unusual in Denmark. Since everything went digital about 10 years ago, we get very little paper mail. I don’t think I’ve received anything in months.

But he had. He had received a carefully decorated envelope, illustrated with crayon, in which there was a single piece of white paper, cut into a kind of snowflake pattern.

It had some Danish writing on it, a few short lines, maybe a poem. And it wasn’t signed…there were just a few mysterious dots.

The man, a highly educated engineer, was concerned. “Am I going to be kidnapped?” he asked me. “Is this some kind of ransom note?”

Gækkebrev are an old tradition

No worries, he was safe. What he had just received was a gækkebrev, or gække letter, named after the vintergække flower that used to come with these letters in the 1800s.

GækkebrevGækkebreve arrive just before Easter, and they are always carefully cut from a single piece of paper, usually in an elaborate pattern. The poems are usually standard, copied from a book, and they are anonymous, but the mysterious dots they are signed with correspond to the number of letters in the sender’s name.

So if I sent you a gækkebrev, I would sign it with three dots, for K-A-Y.

If you can guess who sent the letter, I owe you a chocolate Easter egg. If you can’t then you owe ME a chocolate Easter egg.

Thus, gækkebreve are very popular with small children looking for candy.

My guess was that maybe this engineer had a young child or young neighbor who might have made this at school. And he did.

Traditions vs. digitalization

Gækkebreve are a great Danish tradition, but like many other Danish traditions, they are fighting with the country’s ambitious digital agenda.

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March 5, 2025 by
cat in the barrel festelavn Denmark Mardi Gras
Podcasts, Stories about life in Denmark, The Danish Year

February, The Cat in the Barrel and the Absence of Faith: The Danish Year Part 2

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.

Put a cat in a barrel.

Hang up the barrel, maybe from a tree.

And then hit the barrel, with a stick. Hard, until the barrel breaks and the cat runs away.

It doesn’t sound very nice, but that’s the way Danes used to celebrate Fastelavn, which is the Danish version of Carnival, or Mardi Gras.

These days the Danes are great fans of animal rights, and often the drivers of animal rights laws in the European Union.

But back in the day, “hitting the cat in the barrel” was the way that superstitious Danes tried to ward off evil. That poor cat.

Cat in the barrel for children

Fast forward to today, the barrel is still part of the event, and so is the stick, but the cat is long gone.

Now “hitting the cat in a barrel” is something that Danish children do.

The barrel contains candy, and when the child with the biggest swing breaks it open, the candy spills all over the floor, a bit like a piñata.

All the children run to collect their share, and the kid who broke it open is named the Cat King or Cat Queen. They get a paper crown to wear for the rest of the party.

Fastelavn is one of the Danes’ favorite holidays. It takes place in February, when the light is finally beginning to come back after a long season of winter darkness.

The kids dress up in cute costumes, and sometimes they rasle or ask neighbors for treats.

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February 11, 2025 by
Income inequality Denmark
Podcasts, Stories about life in Denmark, The Danish Year

January, Skiing, and Income Inequality: The Danish Year Part 1

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.

January is part of the dark times in Denmark. Usually the sun comes up around 830 and is gone by 430.

If you work in an office all day, you might not see it at all.

And if you’re part of the bottom 80% of Danish earners, you’ll probably spend most of your dark January evenings and weekends at home, hoping your bank account can recover from the Christmas excesses.

Restaurants have a lot of empty tables this time of year. Shops mostly process the return of unwanted Christmas presents.

Now, this can and often is packaged as hygge. Candles, TV, sweaters, warm slippers, hot tea. But it’s often just being broke and not being able to go anywhere.

The rich go skiing

Yet if you’re part of the top 20% of earners in Denmark, maybe even the top 10%, January is the time to go skiing.

Not in Denmark, which doesn’t have any mountains for downhill skiing, or enough snow for cross-country skiing. You go to Sweden for cheap skiing, Norway for slightly more expensive skiing, or to France or Switzerland for luxury skiing where you can show off your Rolex Explorer wristwatch on the slopes.

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January 29, 2025 by
Podcasts, Stories about life in Denmark

The Danish Empire – without Greenland?

Denmark, as Danes like to tell you, is a little country. But it used to be a much bigger country, a bit of an empire.

Norway was once part of Denmark. Iceland was once part of Denmark. The southern half of Sweden and a bit of northern Germany used to be part of Denmark. What is now called the US Virgin Islands used to be part of Denmark.

And Denmark had colonies in Africa and India, which is why when you’ll go into many Danish supermarkets – even online supermarkets – you’ll see a section called Kolonial, or Colonial.

It features long-life products, like spices and nuts, that used to come from trading posts in the faraway Danish colonies.

Royals in folk costumes

Over time, through war losses and independence movements, the Danish Empire shrank…and today we’re going to talk about how it might shrink further.

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January 4, 2025 by
Podcasts, Stories about life in Denmark

Learning Danish through song lyrics

One of the first gifts I received in Denmark was a CD by a singer called Carsten Lykke. “I think you’ll like this,” said one of my first Danish friends.

And I did – even though I didn’t speak much Danish at the time, Carsten Lykke’s lyrics made me laugh. A small, awkward guy, who was at that time best known as the leader of a Blur or Pulp-style band called the Ibens, Carsten’s solo work mostly involves him making fun of himself and his treacherous relationship with his mother.

His big hit involved a fantasy of being married to then-Crown Prince Frederik (“If Frederik was into men, I’d be Queen right now”) He’s willing to laugh at the Danish Jante Law, the unwritten rule against celebrating status or success, with songs like “I burde gi’ mig bank“, the chorus of which is, “I’m so successful, you ought to punch me.”

At any rate, I learned a great deal of colloquial Danish from that CD, so much I didn’t realize it until Carsten Lykke, now in his mid-50s, put out a new single earlier this year. I cued up all his old stuff again.

I still remembered almost every line.

Find a Danish lyricist you enjoy

That’s why one of the tips I give to newcomers in Denmark is learning Danish through song lyrics. Find a Danish lyricist who writes songs you enjoy listening to, again and again.

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October 2, 2024 by
Podcasts, Stories about life in Denmark, Working in Denmark: Danish Business Culture

Job switching in Denmark

He was a highly-educated specialist from Southern Europe, and my assignment was to help him adjust to the business culture in his new role at a large Danish company.

We’d been working together for awhile when I noticed he still hadn’t updated his LinkedIn. According to his profile, he was still in another part of Europe working for a different company entirely.

I asked him – does this mean you don’t like your new job?

He said, no, I like it at lot. But maybe in a year or two I’ll want to work someplace else, and I don’t want my LinkedIn to look flaky, like I’m job hopping.

I told him, job hopping is not a problem in Denmark, which has one of the highest job mobility rates in the OECD. Up to 20% of Danes will have a new job this year.

Danes change jobs more than people elsewhere in Europe

And that’s not just young workers. People in the prime of their careers change jobs at a higher rate in Denmark than they do elsewhere in Europe, and even for people over 55, job mobility is high.

As a matter of fact, if you don’t change jobs regularly in Denmark, or at a minimum change jobs within a company if you’re there for a few years, people might wonder why.

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September 3, 2024 by
Podcasts, Stories about life in Denmark

The design quirks of Copenhagen

It’s summertime, the top tourist season in Copenhagen, and the streets and the bike lanes and the harbor boats are full of people from around the world. One of the things they come to look at is Danish design.

I’ve created a new audio tour of Danish design in Copenhagen via Voicemap, but I thought I’d share a few quirks of design in Copenhagen that are not in the tour.

First of all, did you know that Copenhagen has its own color?

It’s called Copenhagen Green, and it’s a dark emerald green, mixed with a fair amount of black. A little like the dark green we see on the leaves of trees here in August. Pantone 3435C, for you designer types.

Green and black blend well

You’ll notice that all Copenhagen benches are this color, and there are thousands of these wood and cast-iron benches around town. They were originally designed more than a hundred years ago by Thorvald Bindesbøll, an art nouveau master also known for the Carlsberg beer label.

You will see Copenhagen Green on many wooden doors and window frames in the old city, as well as lamp posts, railings, even small bridges in the beautiful Ørsteds Park, all painted Copenhagen Green. This was a conscious decision by city leaders in the early 1900s.

They felt the combination of green and black blended well with both natural and urban settings and using it widely would create a sense of harmony. Plus almost everybody likes green.

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August 8, 2024 by
Podcasts, Stories about life in Denmark

Who is Holger Danske?

Many countries have a fictional character who represents them. Uncle Sam for the USA, Marianne in France, Bharat Mata or Mother India.

Others have a legendary figure, who was real at one point but is now shrouded in myth, like King Arthur in England.

For Denmark, Holger Danske is both.

He was probably real, although he didn’t live in Denmark. He was a Danish knight living in France in 8th century, serving Charlemagne, and he appears in several of the epic poems of the time as Ogier the Dane.

When those poems were translated into Old Norsk, he became Oddgeir danski, which gradually morphed into Holger Danske.

The sleeping hero

He has been a hero for centuries. And he is a sleeping hero.

The legend is that when Denmark is in trouble, Holger Danske will rise from his slumber and come to its defense.

This is why during World War II, when Denmark was occupied by the Nazis, one of the largest resistance groups called itself Holger Danske.

Consumer products

If you’re not Danish, you may have experienced Holger Danske in the form of consumer products.

There is a Holger Danske moving company with trucks all over Denmark, a Holger Danske beer, Holger Danske Aquavit liquor, Holger Danske tobacco. There’s a Holger Danske bar. Holger Danske has appeared on the Danish national football shirt.

And, very famously, there’s a statue of Holger Danske in the basement of Kronborg Castle, often known as Hamlet’s Castle, in Helsingør, Denmark – which Shakespeare referred to as Elsinore.

(I go by the castle in my new audio tour of Helsingør.)

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July 7, 2024 by
Podcasts, Stories about life in Denmark

The white magic of the Danish graduation hat

I’m occasionally hired to do cultural training for international specialists coming to Denmark. This involves four hours of explaining the basics of Danish life – the banking system, the health care system, how to shop for food – for example, the fact that yellow is the color of discounts in Denmark. If something has a yellow price tag, the price has been cut.

And I always include a section on the Danish year.

By the Danish year, I mean the rhythm of vacation weeks and holidays from year to year, from bonfires on Sankt Hans at midsummer to the eating of duck on Morten’s Day in November.

Morten’s Day isn’t as popular as it once was, but if you didn’t know about it you might wonder why there are suddenly pictures of ducks all over the place.

The truck tour

But what always gets the most interest is what’s about to occur over the next couple of weeks – Danish high school graduations and the accompanying truck tour.

If you’ve been in Denmark in June you’ve seen this. Open-backed trucks packed with teenagers wearing fresh white caps and cheering or blowing whistles. Using there’s some pop music pumping at a very high volume.

The sides of the truck are covered with white banners, traditionally bedsheets, on which are painted slogans that are more or less obscene.

Everybody on the truck except the driver is several beers in and shouting at passerby on the sidewalk, who shout back.

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June 12, 2024 by
Podcasts, Stories about life in Denmark, Working in Denmark: Danish Business Culture

Do you have to learn Danish to work in Denmark?

In one of my seminars, I met an Irishman who had fallen in love with a Danish woman. He agreed to move to Denmark and thought it would be better for his job prospects if he learned to speak Danish.

“Why not just learn Norwegian? It’s easier,” his girlfriend said cheerfully.

The poor man did start to learn Norwegian, only to be told by his laughing girlfriend that her suggestion was an example of the famous Danish humor.

But she was correct that Norwegian is probably easier to pick up. Danish is a difficult language to learn, even if you speak its close linguistic cousins, English and German.

While the written language isn’t too tough to figure out, the spoken language is a headache. Danes pronounce only small bits of each word and smash those small bits together.

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April 30, 2024 by