Books

Get the new, updated How To Live in Denmark 2017 book

The 2017 update of Kay Xander Mellish’s classic book “How To Live in Denmark” is finally here – with 8 new chapters, including “How I Finally Learned Danish”, “Danes and Singing”, “Danish Birthdays”, “Salaam and Goddag: Denmark for Muslims”, and “Cat Bites and Dental Vacations: The Ups and Downs of the Danish Health Care System.”

The eBook costs only US$7/DK49 to download from Amazon, Saxo.com, Google Play, and iTunes. If you like the book, please leave a review!

A print paperback will be in stores soon, or you can order direct and we’ll send the book anywhere in the world.

Why an update?
Kay says: “It’s been three years since I published the initial version of the book, and I realized that a few chapters had become outdated. One suggested that there was very little cybercrime in Denmark, something that has certainly changed since 2014: almost all the Danish government ministries have been hacked.

“I also thought it was important to talk about both the fashion for all things Danish that has emerged over the past couple of years, as well as the increasingly harsh tone the Danish government has taken against every kind of foreigner.”

Book Kay for your group
Kay is also a popular public speaker. If you represent a corporate or community group and would like to have Kay make a presentation about arriving in Denmark at your location, please get in touch via this site’s contact form for more information. Or read more about Kay’s other events.

Podcasts, Stories about life in Denmark, Working in Denmark: Danish Business Culture

Why job titles aren’t that important in Denmark

When I do How to Live in Denmark presentations, I generally ask for just a few simple items – a screen, a remote, and a glass of water.

On a recent gig, I was provided with everything except the water. And since I had met several of the company’s employees when I arrived – handshakes with Mette, Søren, Nikolaj – I asked one of them to kindly get me a glass of water. I asked Nikolaj.

Nikolaj smiled, walked off, and brought me back a glass of water.

It was only after the presentation was finished and I was home making connections on LinkedIn that I found out that Nikolaj was Senior Vice President for Europe, with more than 650 people working for him and a salary that must have been in the 3 million-kroner-a-year zone.

But Nikolaj had never mentioned his title to me, because that’s just not done in Denmark.

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Podcasts, Stories about life in Denmark, Working in Denmark: Danish Business Culture

Is joining a union worth the money? (And what’s the difference between a union and an A-kasse?)

When you first arrive in Denmark to work or look for work, the last thing you need is another monthly expense. So many foreigners “save money” by not joining a union.

And I was one of them. To be honest, joining a union never even occurred to me.

In the US, unions are either for hands-on workers – steelworkers, hotel maids – or for civil servants, like schoolteachers and cops. Knowledge workers and creative types are almost never unionized.

But that’s not true in Denmark, where engineers, doctors, lawyers, bankers, managers, and writers regularly join unions.

Unions can arguably be even more important for foreign employees than they are for Danes.

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Podcasts, Stories about life in Denmark, Working in Denmark: Danish Business Culture

Networking in Denmark – 5 useful tips for making Danish business contacts

I was at a high-level networking meeting the other day. Not on purpose, but because they originally asked me to be their speaker, and then decided they wanted somebody else to be their speaker instead and were too embarrassed to un-invite me.

So there I was in a vast room of men (and it was mostly men) wearing pretty much the uniform of the male Danish executive: blue business suit, pale shirt open at the collar, a few neckties – not many – and pointy leather shoes.

And they were all wandering around the room like children lost in a department store at Christmastime looking for their parents. They were all there to network and meet each other, but they didn’t quite know who to network with. So they mostly ended up talking to people they already knew. They did not expand their networks.

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Podcasts, Stories about life in Denmark, Working in Denmark: Danish Business Culture

How to Work in Denmark Part 6: The secrets of socializing with your Danish colleagues

When you work in a Danish office, you’ll often find yourself invited to impromptu in-office social events with your Danish colleagues. Somebody’s birthday, someone’s having a baby, somebody has been with the company for 10 years, someone is going on vacation the next day. And they almost all involve cake.

Cake is very important in Denmark. Cake builds bridges. Cake makes friends. And when there’s cake on offer, as a foreigner, it’s a good idea to show up and accept it.

When I first started working in a Danish office, I made a big mistake. I said no to cake.

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Podcasts, Stories about life in Denmark, Working in Denmark: Danish Business Culture

How to Work in Denmark Part 5: The Danish Art of Taking Time Off

My apologies that I haven’t been blogging for the past couple of months – I’ve taken some time off to promote my book Top 35 Mistakes Danes Make in English, which you can get on Amazon or Saxo.com, or at any Danish bookstore.

But taking time off is a very important part of Danish life – in fact, some people would say it is one of the best parts of Danish life.

The best example, of course, is the famous Danish summer vacation. When I first began working in Denmark, people used to start saying around April or May, “So – are you taking three or four?”

What they meant was, are you taking three or four weeks off for your summer vacation?

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Books, Stories about life in Denmark

Top 35 Mistakes Danes Make in English: The best-selling book

If you’re Danish or have friends or family who are Danish, you may enjoy my new book, “Top 35 Mistakes Danes Make in English.”

For the past 16 years, I’ve made my living at least in part by correcting Danish people’s English at big companies like Danske Bank and Carlsberg. And I run into the same mistakes again and again.

Confusing ‘fun’ and ‘funny.’ Mixing up ‘customer’ and ‘costumer’. Spelling ‘loose’ with two ‘o’s and ‘see’ with only one ‘e’. Confusing ‘learn’ with ‘teach’ and ‘loan’ with ‘borrow.’ And saying ‘meet’ to mean the time one starts work. “You must meet at 9.” Meet who?

This book is an attempt to put myself out of business.

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Podcasts, Stories about life in Denmark

Danes and Spring: Hot wheat buns and highly-educated drunks

 
It’s spring in Denmark, and spring is by far my favorite season here. The wonderful white Scandinavian sunlight is back after the dark days of the winter, the flowers are coming out on the trees, and everybody’s in a good mood. The outdoor cafés are full of people again – sometimes draped in blankets to keep warm, but outside all the same.

April and May are often the best months for weather in Denmark, along with September. Summers can be rainy. And April is when Tivoli opens in Copenhagen. (Side note: when you see a man in Denmark with his trousers accidentally unzipped, you quietly inform him “Tivoli is open!”)

Tivoli is one of the world’s great non-disappointing tourist attractions – it’s constantly updated, with new shops, new rides, fresh flowers and fresh restaurants. And in the spring, it’s not as crowded as it is in the summer. You can hang out all day, have a picnic, ride the rollercoaster, even hear some bands play.

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Podcasts, Stories about life in Denmark, Working in Denmark: Danish Business Culture

How to Find a Job in Denmark Part 4: The Danish job interview

If you’ve been asked for a job interview at a Danish company, congratulations. Danish companies don’t like to waste time, so they wouldn’t be setting aside time to meet you if they didn’t think there was a solid chance they might hire you.

Job interviewing in Denmark is a difficult balance, because the Jantelov makes all forms of bragging or self-promotion distasteful to the Danes. You’ve got to convince the person interviewing you that you’re skilled and capable without sounding like a used car salesman.

What I tell potential hires to do is prepare by reviewing their working history and coming up with three good stories about projects they’ve worked on – two in which you did well and succeeded, and one that went very badly, but where you learned some important professional lessons.

By admitting to have made some mistakes in your work life or have been less than perfect on the job, you’ll give yourself a lot more credibility with Danish companies, where the default motto is “Work hard, but don’t take yourself too seriously.”

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Podcasts, Stories about life in Denmark, Working in Denmark: Danish Business Culture

Job Search in Denmark Part 3: Your Danish cover letter, plus LinkedIn, plus two magic words

In the era of online applications, face-to-face networking, and LinkedIn profiles, the Danish cover letter is a bit of a lost art.

Probably your future employer will ‘meet’ you via one of these other channels before they ever read the letter that is supposedly introducing you.

But it’s still worth writing, because it’s a chance to set the experience on your cv in the context of the job on offer.

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