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Stories about life in Denmark

What’s it like to live in Denmark as an expatriate? Kay Xander Mellish has lived in Copenhagen since 2000, and her blog about life as a foreigner among the Danes includes a podcast as well as drawings and photographs. If you are moving to Denmark, studying in Denmark, or simply thinking of visiting Denmark, you may enjoy this blog about the experiences of a foreigner in Copenhagen.

October, Democracy in Denmark, and competitive poster hanging: The Danish Year Part 10

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.

I travel a lot around Denmark, giving speeches in various cities and towns, and I usally travel on the on the Danish train network, DSB. Danes love to hate DSB, but I kind of like it. The trains are clean, generally on time, and you even get frequent traveler miles for your trips that you can use to buy ice cream or other snacks. And the trains have big windows that you can look out and see this lovely, flat country roll by.

The name of this podcast is How to Live in Denmark, but Denmark is not a uniform thing. The landscape differs – a few hills in some places, forests in some places, water to cross over – and the government differs. While the Parliament in Copenhagen decides on big issues like defense and immigration, local authorities are in control of things that really matter to everyday life.

Democracy in Denmark: localities have a lot of control

October 13, 2025 by Kay Xander Mellish

Podcasts, Stories about life in Denmark, The Danish Year

September, elite sports in Denmark, and the not-quite death of Jante Law: The Danish Year Part 9

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.

September 16, 2025 by Kay Xander Mellish

In the Media, Merchandise, Stories about life in Denmark

Buy our “How to Live in Denmark” NFTs

Collecting NFTs is a fun way to engage with images you like, own something unique, and support the artist. (There’s also a possibility of making some money on your investment, although certainly no guarantee.)

We’re now offering a small selection of limited-edition How to Live in Denmark NFTs via Rarible, a marketplace for both new and established artists. Check out our How to Live in Denmark NFT listing here.

You will recognize many of the images from their earlier appearances on this site, such as this one and this one.

What are NFTs anyway?

Art NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are unique digital assets that represent ownership of a piece of digital art, like a painting, animation, or music, stored on a blockchain (a secure online ledger).

Unlike regular digital files that can be copied endlessly, each NFT is one-of-a-kind or part of a limited edition, making it special and verifiable. It’s like owning an original artwork with a certificate of authenticity that can’t be faked, but it exists online.

Our How To Live in Denmark NFTs are priced modestly – one POL is roughly equivalent to one DKK, so the least expensive images are about DK10.

Limited edition

Will they ever be worth more than that? Beats me. As a former financial journalist, I’ve seen a lot of once-reliable assets crash land. (Apropos of nothing, I own shares in Boeing. Ouch.)

At any rate, the How To Live in Denmark NFTs on Rarible are a limited edition, and I’ve purchased a few for my own collection, so feel free to join me.

You need a crypto wallet to connect, but perhaps you already have that.

July 12, 2025 by Kay Xander Mellish

Podcasts, Stories about life in Denmark, The Danish Year

July, Nature in Denmark, and following The Daisy Route: The Danish Year Part 7

July is vacation month in Denmark, and it’s ironic that many Danes go elsewhere on vacation at just this time of year, when you have the best chance of good weather in Denmark. And I do mean chance – there is never any guarantee.

Some Danes go abroad, driving vacations to Southern Europe are popular. There’s a well-known cycle in which the summer weather is good one year, so everyone plans a vacation in Denmark the following year, and then the weather is awful, so everyone plans a foreign vacation the next year, and then the weather is good, and so on.

You can surf in Denmark

Staying in Denmark, even if you don’t own one of the famous Danish summer houses, can be a great choice. There’s a surprising amount of nature to experience in this small, flat, country that isn’t as densely populated as the UK, or the Netherlands, or even Germany.

You can surf in Denmark, along the windy west coast, and when you’re done explore the ever-changing sand dunes. Maybe visit the little lighthouse that is slowly being swallowed up by the sand.

Hike through ancient forests

In Denmark you can hike through ancient forests, and even sleep there in some of the public forest shelters. Most of the forest shelters are big wooden boxes with one side entirely open, but with a roof to protect you from the rain.

July 1, 2025 by Kay Xander Mellish

Podcasts, Stories about life in Denmark, The Danish Year

June: Danish pride, women in uniform, and the reverse Jante Law: The Danish Year Part 6

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. This year 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.

June is a glorious month in Denmark, the sun has arrived but the mosquitos haven’t, and it is full of special days, from graduations to weddings to the midsummer festival of Sankt Hans, where Danes meet to sing traditional songs before a giant bonfire.

Danes love a good bonfire, and kids are generally introduced to them in kindergarten, where small children gather around the big open flame in their play clothes.

The Danish National Day

June also includes the closest Denmark gets to a national day, Constitution Day. The Danes are modest about this, there are no parades or fireworks or military fly-bys. A few politicians make speeches about how important the Constitution is, but many people don’t even get a day off work. And the Constitution has to share the day with Father’s Day in Denmark.

June 2, 2025 by Kay Xander Mellish

Podcasts, Stories about life in Denmark, The Danish Year

May, the Candle in the Window, and Getting Old in Denmark: The Danish Year Part 5

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. This year 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.

Getting the present to remember the past is always tricky business. All over the world, there are statues set up so that people will always remember that great man so-and-so. Most of the time when you ask a local – who is that a statue of? they say, I have no idea. These great men in their time now spend centuries having birds stand on their head.

The past is past, and memories don’t always persist.

So it is with a lovely May tradition in Denmark, setting a candle in the window on the night of May 4. This is to commemorate the surrender of the Germans and the end of the Nazi occupation in 1945.

The Nazis imposed a blackout on Denmark to confuse the Allied air forces, so now that they were defeated, a candle in a window became a small symbol of rebellious light.

A rememberance ceremony, forgotten

I intend to participate every year on May 4, but I often forget, and to be honest I see very few candles in windows these days.

You’d have to be aged 85 or older now to remember the war, and Germany is one of Denmark’s greatest friends and Allies.

In addition, the elderly who do remember the occupation and the blackout generally do not live with their families in Denmark, families to whom they might pass on the tradition.

May 2, 2025 by Kay Xander Mellish

Paerdansk Pear Danish by Kay Xander Mellish

Podcasts, Stories about life in Denmark, The Danish Year

April, Gardening in Denmark, and what it means to be “Pear Danish”: The Danish Year Part 4

As the long Danish winter finally draws to an end, it’s time for Danes to start planting their gardens.

Now, in early April, it’s rhubarb, parsnips, cabbage. After the risk of frost is gone, in late April, you can put down some beets, and chives, and parsley – all good traditional Danish food.

By May, you can try with the tomatoes, which may or may not ripen depending on whether you get a warm, sunny summer, always a roll of the dice in Denmark. One year we ended up with hard, green tomatoes in September.

The growing season in Denmark is short. If you miss the planting deadlines, you’re probably out of luck.

And even if you are in luck, the amount you spend at the garden center will far outstrip the amount it would take you to buy the same foods at the corner market.

Names that include “gaard”

But Danes love to garden, they love to touch the Earth. Denmark industrialized fairly late compared to the rest of Europe – really not until the late 19th century – and even then it focused on cooperative agriculture for export. Denmark is still known around the world for its butter and bacon.

Many Danes still carry the name of their family farm in the name they use today.

The Danish word for farm is “gaard”, so the names of jewelry designer Ole Lynggaard, or golfer Nicolai Højgaard, or politician Pia Kjærsgaard, all reference what was once the family farm, the “gaard”.

April 3, 2025 by Kay Xander Mellish

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

“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.

Gækkebreve 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.

March 5, 2025 by Kay Xander Mellish

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

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.

February 11, 2025 by Kay Xander Mellish

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Kay Xander Mellish is a US-DK dual citizen. She grew up in Wisconsin, USA, but has lived in Denmark for more than a decade. Kay is a popular keynote speaker on Danish working culture and offers practical advice to international professionals navigating Danish work environments.

In addition, she helps Americans and Danes avoid misunderstandings and improve their cross-cultural teamwork.

Kay is the author of "How to Work in Denmark" (2022 and 2018), "How to Live in Denmark" (2017 and 2014), "Top 35 Mistakes Danes Make in English" (2016), "Working with Americans: Tips for Danes" (2019), and "Working with Danes: Tips for Americans" (2020). All of her books are also available in audio format.