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How to Meet a Dead Viking: The mummies of Denmark

Many people who visit Denmark are fans of the Vikings, the familiar name for Scandinavians before the medieval era, although technically speaking the Viking raiders were at their peak in the years 800-1100.

There are plenty of opportunities, especially now during tourist season, to see modern-day Danes dressed up as Vikings, building wooden ships, cooking over open fires, and fighting with swords and shields. Exhibitions like this are very popular with visitors from overseas.

Viking ‘mummies’

What they might not know is that you can see actual Vikings in Denmark, or what’s left of their bodies. It was common in the Viking era and before to toss sacrificial items and people into peat bogs, which, it turns out, preserve bodies and clothing and hair very well.

So there are several places in Denmark where you can see actual humans from the Viking age, more than a thousand years old, and sometimes their clothes and hairstyles, sometimes even the last food they ate, reclaimed from their stomachs.

Some bodies are so well-preserved that they still have fingerprints.

August 1, 2023 by Kay Xander Mellish

Stories about life in Denmark, Travels in Denmark

How to Live in Denmark On the Road: Visiting Esbjerg, Ribe, Fanø

When I mentioned visiting Esbjerg for a few days off this spring, many of my friends in Copenhagen said – why? Esbjerg doesn’t have a reputation as a vacation spot, even though it’s the fifth-largest city in Denmark and the youngest big city.

My daughter, who is more clever than I am, told her Copenhagen friends that we were going to the “West Coast of Denmark” making it sound like we would be relaxing on one of the west coast beaches.

For Copenhagen snobs, Esbjerg is a fishing town, which it was 50 years ago but isn’t really anymore. It’s an oil and wind energy town, industrial but very modern.

Still, I think the city has a bit of an inferiority complex.

May 19, 2021 by Kay Xander Mellish

Stories about life in Denmark

Saving money in Denmark: How to get around for less

Along with food and housing, getting around is a big part of the cost of living in Denmark. In fact, the less you spend on rent, by living outside of the most expensive downtown zones, the more you’re likely to spend on transport.

And no matter what the tourist brochures suggest, you probably won’t go everywhere on a bike in Denmark. Bikes are great in downtown Aarhus or Copenhagen, or in a campus-type area like DTU in Lyngby.

But the further you get outside of urban areas, the more useful a car is. That’s why there are 2.5 million personal cars on the road in Denmark plus 0.5 million “business cars.” Three million cards on the road means roughly one for every two people.

Cars are brutally expensive in Denmark, and if you live far away from mass transport, you might be stuck buying one.

Otherwise, there are many ways to lower your cost of transport in Denmark by getting around for less, and it has a lot to do with how well you plan.

And the Danes are, in general, very good advance planners.

Incredibly cheap train tickets

My personal favorite way to cut the cost of transport in Denmark are the Orange train tickets you can get for incredibly cheap prices if you book in advance.

I was stunned to find that you can get from one side of Denmark to the other – from Copenhagen to Esbjerg, to be precise – for only 99 kroner.

That’s cheaper than a 10-minute trip in a Copenhagen taxi. And it’s 3 1/2 hour journey.

April 25, 2021 by Kay Xander Mellish

Podcasts, Stories about life in Denmark

Books about Denmark from the second hand store

I love old books. I love the kind of old books you get at antique bookstores or on the Internet Archive. And I have a good collection of old books about Denmark.

I like old travel guides, most of which are still pretty useful because the Danes don’t tear a lot of things down the way they do, in say, Los Angeles or Hong Kong. In Denmark you’ll pretty much find most castles and monuments right where somebody left them hundreds of years ago.

If you want to see a famous church or square or the Jelling Stone, your Baedecker guidebook from 1895 will work just fine for you in most cases.

February 27, 2021 by Kay Xander Mellish

Podcasts, Stories about life in Denmark

The Danish Flag: 800 years old and going out of style?

I’ve never seen a country that loves its flag as much as Denmark does – and that’s a big statement, coming from an American. But foreigners who come to Denmark can’t help but notice that the Danish flag is everywhere.

People love to fly Danish flags over their summer houses – the bigger the better. Christmas trees in Denmark are decorated with little Danish flags. Cucumbers in the supermarket have Danish flags on the label to show they’re grown in Denmark. Whenever a member of the Danish royal family has a birthday, two little Danish flags are stuck on the front of every Copenhagen bus.

The Danish flag is closely associated with Danish birthdays. If you have a birthday when you’re working in a Danish office, one of your colleagues is likely to put a Danish flag on your desk. It means – happy birthday! You may see a birthday cake with tiny Danish flags stuck into it, or the Danish flag recreated in red frosting.

And if you’re invited to a party by a Danish friend – any kind of party – you may find paper Danish flags stuck into the ground to guide you to the right house.

The Danish flag is not really a statement of nationalism. It’s a statement of joy.

I’ve never seen anyone say anything negative about the Danish flag – until a couple of weeks ago.

September 3, 2017 by Kay Xander Mellish

Podcasts, Stories about life in Denmark

Danish gangsters: Night-time helicopters and the risks of a knit cap

If you live in Denmark or follow the Danish media, you’ll know there’s been a lot of talk of gangsters over the past week. One Danish gang is trying to expand at the expense of another gang, and this summer there have been about 25 shootings in Copenhagen, generally in the northern neighborhoods – my neighborhood.

Somebody was shot outside my supermarket, somebody else was shot outside the school near my house, and a couple of people have been shot just walking down the street.

Most of the victims are other gangsters, but a few have been unlucky civilians in the wrong place at the wrong time. All have been young men, and the Copenhagen police went so far as to suggest that young men stop wearing knit hats. Knit hats can be a gang sign.

I should point out that this summer in Denmark has been so cold that wearing a knit hat in August can actually seem like a good idea.

August 20, 2017 by Kay Xander Mellish

Podcasts, Stories about life in Denmark

Private-equity pastry and the decline of bodegas: How Denmark is changing

I help out at a flea market sometimes near Copenhagen, a flea market that’s held a few times a year to benefit my daughter’s marching band. We sell things people have sent for recycling – at the local recycling center, you can put things that are still useful in a special room, and then community groups sort through those things and sell them to raise money.

We have one persistent problem: too many shotglasses. Each new week brings dozens of beautiful crystal shotglasses, prized for a lifetime by someone from the older generation, perhaps now the dead generation. These people to used to drink clear snaps before fancy Easter lunches, and or a dark bitter alcohol called Gammel Dansk before breakfast.

People in Denmark don’t do that much any more. They go jogging before breakfast and drink wine for holiday lunches, if they drink anything.

And most young people already have a set of grandpa’s old shotglasses gathering dust somewhere at the back of a cabinet, and they don’t need any more.

So week after week, these lovely little etched crystal glasses line up like fragile soldiers on the storage shelves at the flea market. Nobody needs them, nobody buys them, but we just don’t have the heart to throw them out.

May 26, 2015 by Kay Xander Mellish

Podcasts, Stories about life in Denmark

Danes and Fear: What is there to be afraid of in Denmark?

I was walking towards my home in Copenhagen the other day, when I walked past a kindergarten. It had a big, open playground with lots things for the kids to climb on, but nobody was climbing. The kids were all gathered around a giant, open bonfire. Now, these kids were 3 to 5 years old, and the flames of the bonfire were probably twice as tall as they were. But there was no restraining fence or barrier to keep them away from it. Just a couple of adults and some pails of water.

Big open fires, which are called bål, are pretty common in Denmark, even around children. Sometimes the kids even roast little pieces of bread over the fire, or rather, a long piece of dough curled around a stick. Snobrød, it’s called. Kids grow up learning not to be afraid of fire. Maybe that’s a legacy of Denmark being such a cold country; fires were once very important to staying alive.

Even at Tivoli in the winter, you’ll see open containers of flaming hot coals – you know, the sort of things you usually see in depictions of Hell in Dante’s Inferno. But at Tivoli Danish parents are carefully showing their children how to warm their little fingers over the hot coals. No fear.

May 10, 2015 by Kay Xander Mellish

Stories about life in Denmark

Danish Vikings, or how to find Vikings in today’s Denmark

I play a little game sometime when I look at Danish people. I imagine them as Danish Vikings. It’s easy now that big beards are in fashion on young men. Sometimes on the metro I’ll look up at the hipster guy playing with his iPhone next to me and imagine him wearing a big fur cloak. Maybe a rope belt, with a sword dangling from it.

I imagine him stepping off the boat in Newfoundland in the year 1000, freaking out the local American Indians.

Imagining Danish women as Vikings is a little harder. They don’t usually have the long braids or wear the big golden brooches that Viking ladies used to fasten their dresses. They don’t wear the headscarves the married women used to wear. Of course, you can still see plenty of headscarves in Denmark, but usually not on the Danes.

January 31, 2014 by Kay Xander Mellish

Podcasts, Stories about life in Denmark

Danish names: Why it’s bad to be Brian

Danish names strongly indicate the owner’s age group. Peter, or its variant Peder, used to be the most popular boy’s name in Denmark. To Danish children, Winnie-the-Pooh is “Peter Plys,” and Curious George is “Peder Pedal.”

But in 11 years living in Denmark, I have met precisely two “Peter”s under age 50, and none in my small daughter’s generation.

The trend for boys in her class is “M” names – Magnus, Marius, Mathias, Markus, Mikkel, or Malvin. And with globalization and the Disney Channel, no one bothers to rename cartoon characters any more. There is no Magnus Mouse.

Guess who you’ll be meeting

Danish first names are extremely generational, and cracking the code means you can pretty much guess who will be across the table from you in a business meeting or blind date without knowing anything else about them.

Ole/Finn

If the man you are meeting is named Flemming, Preben, Henning, or Bent, he is at retirement age or near it.

His wife, sisters or the lady-next-door-he-is-running-away-with will be named Bente or Birthe. His buddies are Ole or Finn.

Nobody involved knows what TikTok is.

July 25, 2013 by Kay Xander Mellish

Kay Xander Mellish has lived in Denmark for more than a decade. She runs a consultancy that helps Danish companies communicate in English and is a popular keynote speaker on topics that include Danish business culture, how newcomers can fit into Danish society, and the “Danglish” that Danes often struggle with when speaking or writing English.

Kay is the author of "How to Live in Denmark" (2014), "Top 35 Mistakes Danes Make in English" (2016), "How to Work in Denmark" (2018),"Working with Americans: Tips for Danes" (2019), and "Working with Danes: Tips for Americans" (2020).