The Year of Living Danishly

by Helen Russell

  Interestingly, research published in Social Psychological and Personality Science found that parents who prioritised their children’s well-being over their own were happier and derived more meaning in life from their childrearing responsibilities. So perhaps curling parents are doing it to make themselves feel better? Maybe, agrees Charlotte, ‘but it doesn’t do our kids any favours in the long run, because life’s not like that.’

  ‘So do Danish kids, their parents, and their teachers, need to toughen up a bit?’ I ask.

  ‘I don’t know if I’d say they need to toughen up,’ she says. ‘Kids should be allowed to be kids for as long as possible, and I think it’s good that they’re asked their opinion about things and encouraged to consider their views and beliefs, like: “What do I like? What do I want to do? How do I feel about this? How can I solve this problem?”’ Despite everything, Charlotte says that she still has a lot of trust in The Danish Way.

  Karen, from the University of Aarhus, agrees and says: ‘We’re never going to be China, but that’s OK. The labour market is changing a lot – we don’t have much industry left and we don’t have oil, we’re not Norway. But what we do have is great creativity among our young people, so this is our top priority.’ This plan of action seems to be paying off. Denmark has just been ranked second in a global talent index, second only to the USA (according to a study by the leadership advisory firm Heidrick & Struggles International).

  ‘So Danish talent is still very much in demand?’ I ask Karen.

  ‘Absolutely. Our young people may each learn at different levels, but they’ll meet the standards in the end. And be happy at the same time.’

  Karen talks me through the higher education options in Denmark. ‘After gymnasium, Danes often work or travel for a bit to learn about the world and its problems before starting university. You’re a better student this way as you’re more mature, you know how to think for yourself, how to discuss, be interested, and be critical – you’re not just regurgitating the opinions of your teachers or parents.’ I think of my own first year at university at the age of eighteen and how difficult I found the transition from slavish retellings of my teachers’ views towards original thought and can’t help feeling she may be right. Going to university at all is a luxury today in most countries, following the abolition of grants and the introduction of tuition fees. But Danes get all of this for free and get paid for the privilege. And because students in Denmark don’t have pressing financial worries, they’re free to choose a course that they’re really interested in, rather than something that will guarantee them a good income in future.

  ‘This means that they’re more likely to stick at their course, work hard, and enjoy the job they get in a related field as a result,’ says Karen. It’s just as Lego Man told me back in February – people here don’t complain about their work much because for the most part, they’re doing something they enjoy in an area that they’re interested in.

  ‘After graduating from your bachelors, you might do a masters or another degree after this,’ Karen goes on. ‘You probably won’t finish studies before the end of your twenties or early thirties – but you’ll have a wealth of life experience when you enter the workplace.’

  This sounds idyllic, although ludicrously generous. I wonder whether you get a free car as well on graduation. And perhaps a pot of gold… But, Karen tells me, there’s trouble in tertiary educational paradise: ‘There are some who want to change the way it works at the moment and the length of time people can be paid to study for. Some politicians are saying they want to make kids finish studying at 24!’ She sounds outraged by such a suggestion.

  As a still-in-debt thirty-something who had to waitress to pay her university tuition fees, then work two jobs to do a postgrad and still only finished paying off her student loan last year, I find myself green with envy at the idea of Danish students getting all of this and more for free, forever, or so it seems.

  ‘But is being paid to study for so long really sustainable?’ I ask.

  Denmark spends more proportionally on education than any other country in the OECD club of 34 advanced nations. Venstre, the largest opposition party, suggested introducing fees in 2013 but was accused by the ruling Social Democrats of ‘gambling with the welfare and equality … we have built up over generations’ – and the proposal was spiked.

  ‘We see education as an investment in our future,’ Karen explains. ‘It’s important to us and I think it makes our kids happier.’ She’s backed up by OECD studies showing that education levels can influence subjective well-being, and that Danes with tertiary education have been found to be happier than those without. Danes pay one of the highest tax rates in the world – at around 56 per cent for the top earners – but the money is put to good use, in Karen’s mind at least, educating the Danes of tomorrow.

  I ask Karen what she thinks of the whole happy Danes phenomenon and she tells me she’s very happy: ‘I have my family, my kids are doing well, I’m satisfied with my career and I have really good work. I’d say I’m an eight or nine out of ten.’

  ‘So why not a ten?’ I ask, pushing it.

  ‘Well, you know, Jante’s Law – it wouldn’t seem very modest, or very Danish, to say a ten…’

  Growing up in Denmark, I decide, is a very cushy deal indeed. From the age of six months onwards, there’s a rhythm to your day, your week and the seasons – celebrating every Danish tradition. As children get older, schools offer the same safe, secure framework within which to play and explore. It must be comforting, being in the same class with the same people for a decade. No matter how unstable life may be at home, with Denmark’s sky-high divorce rate, education can offer a sanctuary.

  This is something I know a little about. My schooldays were by no means perfect but the regularity and structure and sameness of them was reassuring somehow. It was a constant, when home life wasn’t always as stable as the picture-perfect families of two parents and 2.4 children depicted in TV sitcoms. My mother and I did our best to muddle through together, often with unconventional results. Who else gets a lifetime ban from Eton Wine Bar at the age of eight for setting fire to the table? Or ends up at Notting Hill Carnival when her classmates are all at gymkhanas or tap class? I wouldn’t swap these experiences for anything, now. But as a kid I longed to be ‘normal’. I craved ‘boring’. And school was a refuge. No matter how weird life was, I always knew that there’d be sanity come Monday morning. There’d be double history with lovely Mrs Monro, break time, bells, PE (aka hiding in the changing room during cross-country in winter or pleading ‘periods’ to get off swimming in summer), followed by lunchtime chatathons over sloppy tuna pasta bakes and fluorescent e-number-laden orange squash.

  And that was in the UK, I think. Imagine how much fun school must be in Denmark, with all their emphasis on creativity and play and arsing about – I mean, ‘expressing yourself’… I start daydreaming speculatively.

  ‘Were we to continue living Danishly,’ I tell Lego Man when he comes home, ‘our future offspring could look forward to a rounded education, for free, up until the age of eighteen, when he or she could actually be paid to study at one of the best universities in the world.’

  I show him a newspaper article I’ve just read showing that Denmark is the fifth best country in the world at providing higher education, according to Universitas 21, the global network of research universities.

  ‘Only fifth?’ is his reply, before heading off for a run with the dog on the beach. I realise we may have already become spoilt by Denmark.

  * * *

  Things I’ve learned this month:

  Danish kids are very lucky indeed

  Being a toddler here is off-the-scale fun

  It’s possible to look seriously fabulous after seven (seven!) children

  There’s still a lot I have to learn about parenting

  9. September

  Butchers, Bakers & Culture Makers

  A gentle breeze lifts my hair from my neck as I
look out across the sea to Sweden and inhale the salty air. The sun is shining and the sky is blue, with just a few, perfect, Simpsons-style clouds scudding by. I trace my fingers over a Henry Moore sculpture, the bronze warmed by the sun, as a sailboat passes, appearing in the gaps between the free-flowing forms.

  ‘Coffee’s up,’ Lego Man holds two cardboard cups aloft as he walks barefoot on the soft green grass to the shade of an oak tree. I tear myself away and join him, sitting cross-legged and savouring the one caffeinated beverage that I’m currently allowing myself a day. I can almost feel the adrenaline trickling through my veins and making my brain taut and alert once more.

  ‘This is really good stuff.’

  ‘Yeah, a woman in the café told me the coffee here’s legendary. Even Patti Smith dug it when she visited.’

  ‘“Dug”?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Er, the Beat generation called, they want their term of reference back…’

  He narrows his eyes at me and returns to reading the guidebook we’ve been desecrating for the past few days, ticking off sights. It’s our wedding anniversary and we’re in Denmark’s pocket-sized capital of just 550,000 people to celebrate. Wonderful Copenhagen has just been voted the world’s best city for the second year running by Lego Man’s favourite magazine so we’re in town for a long weekend to refuel on culture, decent cuisine and all that Jutland has been depriving us of. I’ve spent some time here for work over the past nine months but we’ve never just hung out together and savoured it – something I promise to rectify during our minibreak. I’ve even left my laptop at home. Now that’s love.

  We’ve already visited the National Museum, the grand Royal Theatre, the futuristic-looking opera house, and the Degas exhibition at Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek – the art museum founded in the 19th century by Denmark’s biggest brewer. We’ve made the pilgrimage to The Little Mermaid statue, walked along the Langelinie promenade, eaten ‘smushi’ – a combination of the famous Danish smørrebrød open sandwiches and sushi – in Strøget, strolled around the Botanical Garden and watched a lot of beautiful people on bikes (‘You don’t get that in Jutland,’ nods Lego Man at a leggy blonde pedalling past in a dress and heels. I clock her equally striking, Viggo Mortensen-alike companion and murmur appreciatively: ‘Mmmm’).

  Now, we’re kicking back at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, just north of Copenhagen. After filling up on Picassos, a Giacometti, Andy Warhols and our first taste of Danish painters Asger Jorn and Per Kirkeby, we take in the gardens and watch children attempt to scale a huge Alexander Calder sculpture. God bless Danish health and safety… Once we’ve finished our coffee, we walk around some more and come across a tree festooned with slips of paper. Each one has a handwritten message on it, Alice in Wonderland ‘Eat Me’-style, with some sort of wish or hope for the future. These range from the profound (‘world peace’) to the fantastical (‘I wish my toy gorilla would come to life’). Before we can nose around at more people’s wishes, we’re press-ganged into creating our own and handed white luggage tags and felt-tipped pens to get us going. ‘You can have three wishes, two personal and one political,’ a woman wearing a multitude of colourful scarves tells us. Yes, even wishes have rules in Denmark. We accept the challenge and Lego Man starts scribbling away furiously. I start writing too, but I’m surprised to find that when it comes to the personal wishes, I’m stumped. If someone had asked me what I wished for a year ago, I’d have said, without hesitation, ‘to write more’ and ‘to have a baby’. Sickening though it sounds, both these things appear to be happening. I no longer have a diary filled with meetings about budgets or strategies or recruitment. I just write, every day. And miraculously, we’re on course to start a family in January. Am I, I hesitate to even dare think it, am I … happy? Just as I am? Danish-style?

  Lego Man is already tying his wishes to the higher branches of the tree so I jot down something about looking after the people I care about, then add as a postscript, ‘…but a lottery win might also be nice.’ I start fiddling with the string to make loops and hang my tags on one of the lower bows when Lego Man comes over.

  ‘So, what were your wishes?’ he asks.

  ‘The usual,’ I reply. ‘Lottery, gender equality, an end to all Nicolas Cage films. Yours?’

  ‘Oh, you know, stuff about the planet.’

  ‘Nice,’ I nod, as we wander back inside.

  Copenhagen is an invigorating place. I know we’re probably making the most of it because we’re here for such a short time before going back to Sticksville, but just having great art and sculpture and a sea view on your doorstep must be good for the soul.

  I try to talk to Lego Man as we amble around, but he’s made a beeline for the eye-wateringly expensive lighting section of the gallery gift shop, making him essentially deaf to the outside world for the next half hour. I need a cultural guide, I think, someone to update me on ‘the scene’ here. I need, essentially, Denmark’s answer to Melvyn Bragg.

  Fortunately, Denmark’s answer to Melvyn Bragg lives and works nearby. Adrian Lloyd Hughes (his father is Welsh but he moved to Denmark aged three) is a broadcaster and host on DR, the country’s public service broadcaster, and has been making television programmes on culture for the past 30 years. I track him down online and we arrange a time to talk before I get busted by Lego Man.

  ‘Are you working on our anniversary trip?’ he eyes me suspiciously.

  ‘No,’ I lie, feeling guilty now. I notice he has emerged from the throng of shoppers empty handed. This is unheard of but it may just give me some leverage… ‘Wasn’t there another design shop you wanted to go to in town?’ Bingo! ‘I could talk to this culture expert while you looked around a bit…’ We stare at each other for several seconds, neither of us wanting to blink first.

  ‘Oh go on then,’ he tells me.

  ‘Thank you!’

  The following day, I catch up with Adrian. I tell him I’ve been to the Louisiana and loved it and he reels off a list of more galleries and museums I should take in during my stay.

  ‘The best Danish museums have become like theme parks, with shops and cafeterias,’ he tells me. The capital’s cultural offerings got a facelift in 1996 when Copenhagen was made European Capital of Culture. ‘It’s like when you’re about to host a dinner party – you get dressed up, get fresh flowers in, do some cleaning, and get your best self ready to present to the world. The same thing happened to Copenhagen.’ This was then incorporated into the infrastructure to keep the city in good nick. So how’s Denmark’s arts scene faring today?

  ‘Pretty well, actually,’ says Adrian. ‘The arts are well supported here and the boom in Danish TV and architecture (and food) can be seen as the result of three decades of financial support.’

  Danish theatres are heavily subsidised, Adrian tells me, ‘and if you buy a ticket, you can probably estimate that the actual cost is twice, or even three times, what you paid.’ As a result, actors usually perform to a full house. Denmark has also been adept at fostering new writing talent. Christian Lollike attracted worldwide attention for Manifesto in 2083, his piece based on the Oslo killer Anders Behring Breivik, and Thor Bjørn Krebs, who wrote about Danish soldiers in the former Yugoslavia, is also celebrated throughout Europe. Many playwrights come up through Aarhus Theatre’s writing school where they’re paid to study (naturally) and have the opportunity to see their work performed at Denmark’s second largest theatre. ‘Private sponsorship is also growing in Denmark,’ adds Adrian, ‘but most of it goes to the ballet – probably because more companies want to be associated with this glossy, beautiful world than a controversial piece of theatre about a Norwegian mass murderer.’

  Discounted ticket schemes make both classical and contemporary dance in Denmark accessible to all and Adrian says that it’s more popular than ever with young audiences: ‘Whenever I go and see something now, I’m stumbling through rows of high school students to get to my seat.’

  Opera is heavily subsidised, too, but tickets st
ill start at around 500 DKK (around £60 or $90), ‘so if you want a babysitter and to park the car somewhere you’re looking at 2,000 DKK (£240 or $360) for a night out,’ says Adrian. The greatest success story to come out of the Danish Opera in recent years has been Kasper Holten, now director at London’s Royal Opera House, who caused a stir with his retelling of Wagner’s Ring Cycle. ‘He staged it with a feminist twist, making the entire production a question of male superiority versus female superiority,’ says Adrian. ‘The “ring” became a DNA molecule and the protagonists were literally fighting over the future of humankind – it was a huge hit.’

  The Danish film industry remains one of the most successful in Europe thanks to a proactive policy of grants and support from the government. Big names still working in Denmark today include Susanne Bier, who directed the Oscar-nominated After the Wedding, Thomas Vinterberg, director of 2014’s Far from the Madding Crowd, and, of course, Lars von Trier. ‘Most Danes acknowledge his genius, even though we may find him incredibly irritating,’ says Adrian. Von Trier was responsible for Dogme 95 – the filmmaking movement begun in 1995 with fellow Danes Thomas Vinterberg, Kristian Levring, and Søren Kragh-Jacobsen. Its goal was to ‘purify’ filmmaking by following rules of production that put an end to predictable plots, superficial action and technological trickery. The rules were later abandoned but Dogme helped legitimise low-budget digital filmmaking and cemented von Trier’s reputation as a controversial figure to be reckoned with.

  Of course, the biggest success story of recent years has been Danish TV. I ask Adrian how this came about and he tells me it was no accident: ‘A decade ago, you couldn’t find a Danish TV series that made it onto anyone’s radar overseas. Then the Danish Broadcasting Corporation [like Denmark’s BBC] took action with a policy of fostering home-grown talent, finding out what writers wanted to work on and helping them to develop their own projects – with huge success.’ With an emphasis on social realism, tense storylines and a distinctive, stylised colour palette (i.e. ‘gloomy’), Danish dramas The Killing, Borgen and The Bridge gripped audiences worldwide and inspired remakes in the US and the UK.