The Year of Living Danishly

by Helen Russell

  TUESDAY: Danish language evening class, then local choir with Lego Man’s colleague in The Big Town. Songs all in Danish. No clue what I’m singing about. Choir mistress attempts to give me some direction in English but suspect something is lost in translation. Highlights include: ‘Think like a fish!’, ‘Remember, you have potatoes in your mouth!’ and ‘Pretend your bottom is bigger!’ But overall, fun. Find out that singing releases endorphins and slashes stress, plus doing it with other people boosts mental well-being, according to Harvard and Yale studies. Sold, I sign up. Am officially member of my first Danish club!

  WEDNESDAY: Local yoga class in Danish (would have preferred Viking goddess Ida’s class but a three-hour round trip to The Big City to get my Zen on might have reverse effect). Yoga apparently improves well-being and increases serotonin levels. Only it turns out that meditation isn’t so relaxing when you don’t yet speak the language and the teacher only knows one English phrase: ‘Feel your rainbow!’ She shouts this, repeatedly, for 90 minutes. No clearer on where my rainbow actually is by end of class. Fail.

  THURSDAY: Danish lessons again. I still suck. Kind Ukrainian gets moved up to the top group. Polish Divorcee and Filipino girls stay in dunce class with Lego Man and me.

  FRIDAY: Cooking club with Friendly Neighbour. Learn that even casual suppers here are An Event with competitive napkin folding, three courses, and an implicit understanding that if you go home after fewer than six hours, you’ve had a terrible time and insulted your host for evermore. Make venison burgers from a deer that one of the members shot last week at ‘hunting club’. Hunting, gathering, and entertaining = high on happy-hobby list for many Jutlanders.

  SATURDAY: Sign up for Stitch & Bitch session in The Big Town in attempt to get crafty. Learning a new skill supposed to make you happier, according to researchers from San Francisco State University. Caveat: not if you get lost en route, arrive late, then discover you’ve forgotten to bring any fabric and so spend three hours rearranging bobbins. Any bitching there may have been was all in Danish so missed most of this but apparently there are rival sewing clubs that all hate each other. Like the Sharks and the Jets but with needles. Terrifying.

  SUNDAY: Supposed to be day of rest but woken at 8am by loud roar followed by smell of burning rubber. Motorbike season has begun. Friendly Neighbour tells us winter is so treacherous that insurance is only affordable once the weather lets up, so bike clubs hit the roads at first opportunity. Catch up on Lego Man’s week. He’s surprisingly less keen on sea-based pursuits after sea swims in temperatures of minus one. Going back to biking and running.

  Exhausted from our exploits, the remains of the day are spent pottering. I’m excited about joining the choir and fully intend to persevere with language classes. But I’m not sure I’ve quite cracked the whole Danish leisure time and club culture.

  ‘Wouldn’t it be nicer to just be spontaneous?’ I put it to Lego Man. ‘Playing a game of tennis if you felt like it? Or going for a run when the mood takes you? Why does it all have to be so formal?’

  He puts down his new gel-bottomed black cycling onesie that makes him look like a stretched seal and thinks about this.

  ‘I don’t know. I was chatting to some of the guys at work and they all say they really like knowing what they’re doing, weeks in advance. The way it was explained to me was that it just makes people feel better this way.’ He relays a discussion he and his fellow Lego minifigures had over morgenmad last week. ‘It’s like the structure helps you feel secure, you know what you’re doing and when – your social life is sorted weeks in advance, so there’s nothing to think about or worry about. Plus there’s so much spare time, it’s nice to know you have something constructive to do with it.’

  I’m a fan of a timetable as much as the next girl but I can’t help feeling that rules take some of the fun out of free time. But I get the idea that being part of something – that feeling like you belong – can make you happy. It gives you an identity, beyond just your job or your marital status or, in our case, nationality. Already, getting involved has made me feel more at home in Denmark. I’m no longer just ‘Lego Man’s wife’ or ‘that weird new English girl that’s moved here’ – I’m now an alto in The Big Town’s premier (OK, ‘only’) choir. I’m that weird new girl who called her teacher a ‘bitch’ in Danish language class. I exist outside of my work and my wifeliness. And it feels good.

  * * *

  Things I’ve learned this month:

  Living somewhere new makes you realise who your friends are

  Danes love a rule

  I am not a linguist

  I am also not a cyclist

  Or a swimmer

  You can dry hump in water

  Filling an entire week with extra-curricular activities makes you really appreciate a Sunday lie-in (and really angry when this is denied you)

  4. April

  Great Danes & Other Animals

  ‘What are you doing tomorrow?’ my new official pal Friendly Neighbour asks, wiping a crumb of soil from her face with the back of an arm and smearing it across her forehead in the process.

  It’s a Saturday afternoon and Lego Man and I are walking the dog. This mainly involves trying to make sure he doesn’t defecate in anyone’s garden and following him around with hands encased in black plastic bags just in case, ready to pounce. With the arrival of spring and a reduction in the number of mornings I’ve needed an ice-scraper to get the car going, our sleepy seaside town has come to life. Suddenly, there are people in the local shop. Boats are being unloaded from trailers in the marina and the trees look as though they’re thinking about sprouting greenery. Our neighbours smile at us, their brusque wintery exteriors sloughing off with the new season as they unfurl like the beech leaves on the bushes surrounding our house. New shoots appear from the earth as flowers contemplate putting in an appearance and Jutland’s gardeners come out to play. There is a staggering amount of double-denim on display in Sticksville.

  Friendly Neighbour is out digging something. She’s kneeling in the grass, trowel in hand, sporting some heavy-duty gardening gloves that she takes off as she sees us coming.

  ‘Tomorrow?’ I survey her perfectly manicured lawn and newly planted bulbs and pray that the dog doesn’t feel the call of nature just yet. ‘No plans, I don’t think…’ This is a lie: I know we have nothing on tomorrow. Just like we currently have nothing on next weekend, nor the one after that. Despite our newly acquired extracurricular pursuits, our social life is still on the sluggish side since arriving in Denmark, so we’re adopting the strategy of saying ‘yes please!’ to any invitation proffered. It’s an interesting exercise in embracing the unfamiliar. So far this month, I’ve been to a Tupperware party (yes, these still exist), a drum and bass night, crab-racing (a popular pursuit in seaside Jutland) and line dancing (with mixed results).

  ‘You’re free then? Great!’ Friendly Neighbour stabs her trowel into the earth like a stake and uses it to lever herself up. ‘Do you want to come see the dancing cows?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  Lego Man eyes the empty bottle of beer and half-drained glass on Friendly Neighbour’s garden table suspiciously. I shoot him a look that says, ‘it’s a free country, a woman can drink-garden if she wants to…’

  ‘This Sunday, it’s Dancing Cow Day!’

  She had me at ‘dancing cow’, but Lego Man still needs convincing and so Friendly Neighbour goes on. ‘It’s tradition here – a special day for farmers. Every spring, they let the cows back out into their fields after a long winter inside. And then they dance. The cows, not the farmers,’ she clarifies.

  I’m reminded of my late grandmother who became utterly bemused every time the Anchor butter advert featuring quickstepping Friesians came on the telly. ‘How do they make them to do that?’ she’d marvel, blissfully unaware of the world of computer animation. Jurassic Park would have blown her mind.

  ‘Cows can’t dance,’ Lego Man states categorically, bringing me back to the present. H
e’s frowning now, as though someone is deliberately trying to bamboozle him.

  Friendly Neighbour smiles patiently, in that way that parents do when explaining something painfully simple to a small child. ‘Sure they can! Well, we say “dance” – they sort of jump. And run around a bit. Because they’re so happy, see? To be back with the grass.’ She gestures at her own grass as if to illustrate and the dog takes this as the go-ahead to make himself at home. He begins assuming the familiar, hunched-over position: knees trembling pre-release. Before I can pull him away, it’s happened and I’m down on all fours with a plastic bag, apologising.

  ‘Don’t worry. It’s no problem,’ says Friendly Neighbour, though her wrinkled nose clearly suggests otherwise. ‘So, shall I pick you up tomorrow to see the crazy cows?’

  ‘Yes, thank you. And sorry about…’ I tail off, giving the black bag and its still-warm contents a swing to avoid having to say ‘sorry my dog crapped on your lawn’ out loud.

  Friendly Neighbour nods before adding: ‘Have you considered dog training?’

  I assure her that I have, and that we’ll be sending him to canine remand school just as soon as I can find one that will have him.

  The next day’s crazy cow party proves just as rock and roll as one might imagine. The ritual marks the start of the outdoor season for all organic cows in Denmark and we learn that a certified organic animal must be outside eating grass for at least six hours a day between April and November. We’re joined at the local farm by crowds of children, all with their faces painted to look like cows (allegedly, though there’s some very inexpert daubing on show). Parents with camera phones line up, poised to capture the moment itself and children tear around making mooing noises. It’s a chilly day with a sharp wind nipping at any exposed flesh so everyone is muffled up in technical outer layers to ensure that they’re well protected from the elements. Spring may have sprung in Jutland, but that doesn’t mean the sun is necessarily ready to make an appearance just yet. Some children are even wearing snowsuits, which, combined with the Jersey-cow face painting, makes them look a lot like Oompa Loompas.

  After a countdown in Danish (which, I’m pleased to report, I can now join in with) the barn doors are hauled open and several dozen cattle are released. As promised, Daisy and co. run, jump and skip excitedly out to pasture. Then there’s some puzzled mooing and the cows stop dead. A few start to buck. There’s an air of panic, and then one by one the animals turn around and run right back inside.

  ‘Ohhhhh!’ the crowd exclaim in disappointment, en masse, as an angry farmer does his best to shoo the cows back out again, without success. After spending five and a half months inside, it appears that the cows have forgotten about the climate in Denmark. They too are finding it a bit cold for their liking. A woman in waders tries enticing them out of their warm, cosy stable with fistfuls of fresh grass, but this fails to pique their interest. There is some shouting and stamping (the farmer) and laughing (us) before everyone decides to call it a day and go home.

  ‘This is most unusual,’ Friendly Neighbour assures us, sounding a little disappointed. ‘Usually it’s quite a good show. The cows are so happy!’

  In lieu of any actual dancing, we spend ten minutes looking at YouTube footage of cows from previous years on Friendly Neighbour’s phone. We make the appropriate ‘ooh!’ and ‘ahhh!’ sounds as we watch a herd hopping around and galloping gleefully and, despite his scepticism, even Lego Man has to admit that it’s pretty remarkable stuff.

  Before this, I’d thought of cows as fairly phlegmatic creatures. My only non-YouTube encounters with cows to date have involved them chewing the cud, lying down and forecasting rain, or accompanied by strips of fried potato and a glass of red in a French restaurant. None of which have given much indication of the presence of joy or strong feelings one way or another. But what if living Danishly could even make cows happy? And what about the non-organic cows that are always inside? The outdoorsy cows might experience a high at being turned out to pasture, but didn’t that mean that they’d feel worse when they had to go back in their barns? And the cows that stayed in their shed all year round wouldn’t know anything different. With no expectations of grassy euphoria and no idea what they were missing out on, might they not be more content with their lot? I think about all the studies saying that Danes are the happiest people on earth and wonder where they’ve been measuring dairy cow contentment instead. In the same way as the indoor cows might be content because they’ve never considered going out to graze (or dance), Danes pottering around Jutland might be similarly satisfied with their lot having never considered the possibility of jacking it all in to become a samba instructor in Brazil. Is it, as Alfred Lord Tennyson might have said had he been knocking around rural Denmark today, better to have danced then stopped dancing than never to have danced at all? Are Danes as happy as they are, not because they have a lot of great experiences compared with others, but because they live in a predictable and stable environment? Am I living among a nation of non-organic dairy cows?

  I put this theory to Lego Man but he’s distracted on his phone. Feeling cheated by the less-than-thrilling spectacle of cows being not-very-crazy, he has been seeking out other animal-tastic outings and proposes a visit to the local zoo. There, we inadvertently witness ‘feeding time’ in the lion enclosure and watch a recently slain horse get torn apart by a ravenous pride in front of a group of schoolchildren.

  ‘It’s like Aslan’s turned on Mr Tumnus…’ I mutter in horror.

  Lego Man, who is now a queasy shade of green, suggests calling it a day. Our reaction makes me wonder; are we particularly squeamish? Or are Vikings just more practical than your average population when it comes to the harsh realities of life and death?

  On the Monday I’m due to have lunch with one of the ‘natives’ I met at cooking club (not the one who shot Bambi), who is on the verge of becoming another actual friend (hurrah!). The scene of Mufasa and his mates gorging on the back end of a My Little Pony is still playing on a loop in my mind so I recount the episode, interested in his take on the spectacle. But my new almost-actual-friend is unfazed.

  ‘So?’ he takes another sip of coffee and stops the waitress to ask whether she recommends the pulled pork or the beef burger.

  ‘But there were children watching!’ I try to impress on him the Tarantino-esque horrors of the scene but The Viking is unmoved.

  ‘And?’ is his response. ‘Danish kids are used to that sort of stuff.’ ‘Stuff’ being disjointed limbs and bloodbaths. ‘When I was seven, we went on a school trip to see a wolf getting dissected.’

  ‘Sorry?’ I splutter cappuccino froth down my jumper and cast around for paper napkins to mop myself up.

  ‘It’s educational,’ he shrugs. He explains that museums in Denmark have been doing public dissections for years, on animals ranging from snakes to tigers. I wonder whether this is something that only happened in the 1970s and 80s, before health and safety and political correctness were invented, but The Viking assures me that the practice is still alive and well. ‘My nine-year-old niece is a huge fan. She asked to go and see a snake get slit open for her birthday this year.’ The Viking’s niece is not alone in her enthusiasm. Animal autopsies are so popular in Denmark that museums often have to hold two a day in the school holidays to meet demand. Children gather around the operating table while a zoologist talks through what they’re doing, from the knives and scalpels they’re using, to what’s inside (‘which mainly looks like sausages,’ The Viking assures me).

  ‘And seeing these things didn’t freak you out?’

  The Viking thinks about this: ‘The smell, I remember, wasn’t great. But the rest was fun. And it’s good for kids to learn. They need to know that nature can be rough and to learn about life and death.’

  ‘At nine?’

  ‘Why not?’

  I tell him that this is a far more graphic introduction to life’s harsh realities than we got when I was growing up. Even my class hamster’s untimely
demise at the hands of Melissa Vincent’s cat was described euphemistically as a ‘passing’ and the nearest we came to seeing his remains was a Start-rite shoebox being covered with soil in the junior school garden. School trips in my day were to places like Anne Hathaway’s cottage in Stratford-upon-Avon or Bekonscot Model Village. Never once did we hop on a coach stinking of sandwiches and chemical toilets to go and see the innards of a wild dog.

  ‘Sounds like you missed out,’ is The Viking’s response.

  He tells me about another outing during university where the whole class decamped to an abattoir: ‘We were studying design in action and they have some really cool lasers to cut through the pigs and joint them and stuff…’ He looks almost wistful as he reminisces about cleanly severed carcases before taking a big bite of his pulled pork sandwich. It’s clear that there isn’t much sentimentality when it comes to animals in Denmark. But this philosophy isn’t always well received by rest of the world – as was shown in the case of Marius.

  Marius was an eighteen-month-old giraffe living in Copenhagen Zoo. Though healthy, he was considered genetically unsuitable for breeding because his genes were too common, so it was decided by the zoo authorities to put him down. This provoked an international outcry and 27,000 signatures on an online petition calling for the zoo to rethink its decision. Several zoos worldwide offered to rehome Marius, but Copenhagen Zoo claimed that these institutions didn’t have the same ethical standards that they did. Officials said that sending the giraffe elsewhere would mean that it could be sold to a circus or spend the rest of its life suffering in a ‘substandard zoo’. Euthanasia, they claimed, was a kinder option. Copenhagen Zoo’s scientific director told CNN at the time that his job was to preserve species, not individual animals.