The list of possible bogholders in my area includes a ‘Jens Larsen’, a ‘Lars Jensen’, a ‘Lars Larsen’ and a ‘Jens Jensen’ – as well as a ‘Mette Jensen’, a ‘Mette Hansen’ and a ‘Mette Nielsen’, just for variety. It turns out that one in every four Danes has the surname ‘Jensen’, ‘Hansen’ or ‘Nielsen’ according to Statistics Denmark. Also in the top ten of Danish surnames are ‘Andersen’ (as in Hans Christian) and ‘Rasmussen’, a name so common that three successive Danish prime ministers from 1993 to 2011 shared the surname. Poul Oluf Nyrup Rasmussen, Anders Fogh Rasmussen and Lars Løkke Rasmussen (no relation) had to be referred to by their first names by the press and fellow politicians to distinguish between them. The ‘sen’ bit traditionally indicated that they were the ‘son of’ someone who had the name preceding this, so Lars Jensen would have been the son of someone called Jens, and Jens Jensen’s dad would have been so crazy about his own name that he decided to use it twice. A bit like New York. (Confused? Welcome to Denmark!)
‘Every other Dane I meet is called Mette or Lars, or Jens,’ I grumble to Lego Man when he gets home to find me barefoot (did I mention the incredibly energy-efficient underfloor heating in Danish homes?), pregnant and plaintive: ‘How on earth am I supposed to remember who’s who?’
‘It’s easy,’ he shrugs, ‘just call everyone Mette if they’re a girl and Lars, or possibly Jens, if they’re a boy. Chances are you’ll be right the majority of the time…’
Reader, I married a genius.
Turning back to my computer, I find out that the same names recur more frequently in Denmark than they might do elsewhere because there’s a rule about Christian names here. Another rule? Of course. Why didn’t I think of that? I inform Lego Man of my new discovery: ‘Apparently, you can choose from a list of preapproved names but if you want something that’s not on the list, you need special permission from the church and government officials.’ Lego Man, now busy surveying the contents of the biscuit tin, doesn’t respond. But after two years of marriage I don’t let a small thing like this deter me. ‘It says here that “creative spellings” are usually rejected—’ I plough on.
‘—Bad luck for any Danish will.i.am wannabes,’ Lego Man chips in through a mouthful of chocolate chunk cookie, keen to prove that he’s still down with the kids.
‘—and that the list of names is reviewed each year. About a fifth of new suggestions get rejected, and recent no-nos include – oh my – “Anus”, “Pluto” and “Monkey”!’
‘Damn. Looks like I’ll have to send back the personalised baby towels then…’
I start to laugh but then get winded by a baby’s foot in my stomach and splutter tea out of my nose (surprisingly painful). I scan the list to make sure the names we’ve been tentatively considering for our (80 per cent likely) son are allowed and am relieved to find they’re in the ‘safe’ column. Reassured, I continue my quest for a bogholder called Jens. Or Lars. Or Mette. With little to go on from the descriptions online, I realise that I’m just going to have to pick one at random to entrust with my financial future. I do an eenie meenie miney moe to decide and land on a ‘Lars’ who operates out of The Big Town. I get in touch, explain my predicament, and make an appointment to meet the next day.
Lars tells me that if I hand over my invoices and any work-related receipts, he can do the rest. All I have to do is pay up a not-insubstantial sum at the end. Grateful and relieved that it’s being taken care of, I wonder whether this is how the Danes feel: they know that they’re paying through the nose, but they suck it up for an easy life. The Viking once told me that he was happy to pay his taxes because the state organised everything for him, and he trusted them to do a decent job.
I’m starting to understand now, a mere twelve months in, how big a part trust plays in the Danish psyche. How it can make life simpler and hassle-free and reduce the capacity for worrying (something I’ve made a hobby out of since the age of two, according to my mother). It feels strange to let go of any semblance of control and just trust in the system. But having no other option, I’m doing it. And it turns out I’m OK.
‘Do you think Danes are more trusting?’ I call The Viking and ask him. ‘Just generally I mean?’
‘You know, I think we might be,’ he tells me. ‘We’ve got the whole welfare system and a tiny population – so we tend to think that most people, well, that they’re good and honest.’ He gives me an example to illustrate this. ‘So I checked my bank account at the other day and found that it was totally empty—’
‘—Empty?’
‘Totally.’
‘God…’
‘—I know. So, I ring up Allan—’
‘—Allan with two ‘l’s?’
‘Yes…’
‘—How funny! Our bank manager’s Allan with two ‘l’s too!’
‘Oh everyone banks with Allan.’ It’s at this point that I am reminded what a small place I live in. ‘So I call up Allan, to be all, like, “where’s my money?”’
‘And what does Allan say?’
‘Well, Allan’s on holiday.’ Allan takes a lot of holidays. Bank clerks, along with everyone else from lawyers to waiters, get paid well out here. Even after taxes, most Jutlanders can afford to treat themselves. ‘So,’ The Viking continues, ‘I’ve got no cash and no Allan, I’m meant to be visiting my folks and I’m all out of gas. I phone my dad to explain what’s happened. I’m like, “Dad, I have no money…” and he says: “oh, sure you do, I just moved it.” And I’m like, “you moved my money?” And he’s like, “yeah!”’
‘What?’ I’m lost. I’m also amused that The Viking regresses to teen-speak when addressing his parents.
‘Dad said he just called Allan about his mortgage, and Allan mentioned this new account for long-standing customers, with extra interest and stuff. So my dad goes, “Oh, that sounds great. Why don’t you move my son’s money in there too?”’
‘And Allan just did it? He didn’t ask your permission or get you to sign something?’
‘No.’
‘And the bank didn’t check with you?’
‘The bank trusts Allan. Allan trusts that my dad is who he says he is. And my dad trusts that Allan is trying to help by offering me the best deal for my money. So he switches my account over.’
‘He just forgets to tell you…’
‘Right. But it all turned out for the best. That’s how trust works here.’
Extraordinary. I call up the happiness economist Christian Bjørnskov who I spoke to at the start of my adventure to ask for his perspective. He confirms that this level of trust is key to keeping Danes so damned happy. As he told me before I started my quest, ‘life is so much easier when you can trust people’, and this is regardless of whether you’re actually about to get your bank account wiped or have your house burgled.
‘So if I feel safe and trust the people around me, I’m less likely to feel stressed or anxious. I have the headspace to be happy?’
‘Exactly,’ he tells me. ‘And countries with a major welfare state tend to be high-trust countries, though the high levels of trust in Denmark aren’t necessarily caused by the welfare state.’
Christian has studied data from as far back as 1930, before the welfare state was established in 1950, and tells me that there was a high level of trust in the very early 20th century as well. ‘It’s as though the trust allows the welfare state to exist – and not the other way around. Danes accept that they must pay high taxes because they trust that the government will use their money wisely and do the right thing. The system works and Danes are, on the whole, happy – because they have high levels of trust.’
‘So where does the trust come from?’ I ask.
‘That’s the million dollar question!’
Klaus Petersen, director of the centre for welfare research at the University of Southern Denmark, thinks he might have the answer – and it’s Denmark’s close affiliation with her Nordic neighbours.
‘We’re all Lutheran countries wi
th a strong social democracy and from the 1930s onwards there has been extreme cooperation to create the “Nordic Social Policy”,’ he tells me when I call him up to find out more. ‘Denmark may be small, but we are joined with others so we feel safe and trust each other.’ International surveys consistently show that Scandinavian countries all share high levels of trust and that Denmark is one of the safest countries in the world. The Vision of Humanity’s Global Peace Index ranked Denmark as the world’s second safest country to live in after Iceland (and it’s colder, darker, and even pricier there…). The number of Danes who say, ‘I’m feeling safe’ is higher than it was in the 1990s and Danes are the most likely in Europe to say, ‘I feel safe out walking in the dark’ (followed by the Norwegians) according to figures from Danish criminologist Rannvá Møller Thomsen.
So why is this? Klaus has a theory that the country’s size helps its residents feel secure.
‘Danes all know each other,’ he tells me by way of explanation. I presume he doesn’t mean literally but he assures me that the truth isn’t too far off in a country of five and a half million. ‘We’ve always been small and there hasn’t been much migration historically so there’s a common Danish identity. You can get a few million people to accept a universal system and feel a shared identity.’
This is all sounding great but I’m a little disheartened that there doesn’t seem to be anything I can take away or that can be applied to anywhere outside of Denmark with its tiny population. But then I read about the work of Peter Thisted Dinesen from the department of political science at Copenhagen University, who researches into social trust. I call him up and badger the poor man in his lunch hour until he generously agrees to take time out to share his hypothesis – that a culture of goodwill towards the state and education may be the reason that Danes are so trusting.
‘We live in a society that’s very fair with efficient institutions and no corruption, and where people are generally treated equally and fairly,’ Peter tells me. ‘Bribing of the police or politicians in Denmark is almost entirely absent, and most of us are well looked after, so this provides the basis for trust.’
According to the annual Rule of Law Index conducted by the Washington-based World Justice Project, Denmark has the world’s most responsible government. Denmark is also perceived as the least corrupt country in the EU according to Berlin-based NGO, Transparency International.
Politicians, a notoriously untrusted sector of society in most other countries, enjoy a surprisingly good reputation in Denmark. What helps is that they’ve long been thought of as ‘normal people’ – so there’s less of a pedestal for them to fall off. Even high-profile ministers working at a national level are famously down-to-earth and accessible, as I’ve found over the course of my research. The political TV drama Borgen helped emphasise this idea of ministers as real people, encountering the same problems as the rest of us, and the show has even been credited with combating voter apathy and boosting turnout at the polls, according to a Copenhagen Business School study.
‘Trust has actually been on the rise in recent years,’ Peter tells me. ‘I wrote a paper together with Kim Mannemar Sønderskov from Aarhus University showing that trust levels between 1979 and 2009 rose by 68 per cent and that 79 per cent of the population said that they trusted “most people”.’
So why the upsurge? Are they putting something in the water out here? I look suspiciously at the half-empty glass in my hand.
Peter has a better suggestion: ‘If you look at immigrants from low-trust societies who are educated in Denmark, they tend to take on our levels of high trust,’ he says. ‘Interestingly there are no differences between children who are immigrants themselves or descendants, which I in part ascribe to encountering fair Danish institutions.’ This means that it’s living in the society of Denmark that makes you trusting. Not just ‘tradition’ or something Danes inherit from their parents.
This, I decide, is wonderful news. It means that living Danishly is helping me to become more trusting and this in turn can help me to be happier. Once you trust ‘the system’ and can get your head around the fact that it’s not trying to screw you over, it’s easier to pay your taxes with grace – safe in the knowledge that the money is going to a good place. I don’t begrudge paying taxes (so much, at least) if it means that I’m helping keep the Danish dream going, free from corruption.
This is an interesting shift in perspective for a girl raised in Thatcher’s Britain. I’ve always been independent but I’m starting to realise that this was because I’ve had to be – because there wasn’t much of a safety net. But it’s different for Danes. And I’m learning to see the benefits of doing things Danishly. I’m even getting better at letting go – relinquishing control and striving for a better work-life balance. It’s not always easy to forget my old ways. There was the day back in July when I found out that two of my contemporaries back in ‘Media Land’ had bagged themselves big, spanking new jobs. Jobs that, for years, I’d thought I wanted, and felt I should be aiming for. At the time, I felt unreasonably agitated, did some aggressive dishwasher loading, broke a plate, and then howled at the sky, ‘Whhhhhhyyyyyy?’ But then I realised that I wasn’t in that race right now. I was writing and being pregnant and seeing friends and walking a dog on a beach. I was having A Life. I could now sleep at night and didn’t have to bribe myself with tissue-wrapped online purchases to get through the week. Before I got pregnant, I’d lost half a stone without even realising it or meaning to (and despite the snegles) because I hadn’t been misery-eating or in thrall to an office treats table. I was at peace. And that felt like a pretty good trade-off.
Soon, we’ll need to decide whether or not to stay in Denmark for another year. We haven’t got long to make our minds up. Should our Made in Denmark baby spend (80 per cent likely) his first year here too? Or would our year of living Danishly be better off remaining just that – an imperfect, finite year of Nordic Narnia? I’m just about to go into list-writing mode to outline the pros and cons when Lego Man crashes through the door, making his usual percussive entrance. It’s 4.30pm.
‘Another busy day?’ I ask, teasingly.
‘It was actually,’ he says, disrobing and dumping more bags than it can be possible for any man to need in the middle of the kitchen floor. Once he’s said hello properly he starts upending clear cellophane packets all over the dining room table.
‘What are you doing?’
He tells me he’s making a Lego model of the Sydney Opera House. As though this is the most obvious thing in the world for a professional in his mid-thirties to be doing on a Tuesday afternoon.
‘It was built by the Danish architect, Jørn Utzon, don’t you know?’ he informs me, rustling packets and raking through mostly-white bricks as he talks. Lego Man insists that this ‘project’ is ‘one of the things there won’t be time for when the baby comes along.’
‘Too bloody right,’ I mutter, then: ‘Do you want to walk the dog or are you too busy playing with toys?’
‘It’s not “playing”, it’s “building”!’
This isn’t the first time he’s tried to convince me of the crucial difference, apparently acknowledged by AFOLs everywhere. ‘Anyway, it’s for grown-ups. See?’ He points at the twelve-plus age-guidance banner on the box with pride. ‘It’s even called “Lego Architecture”. Kids don’t even know what architecture is.’ I detect a distinct eye roll before he gets back to his ‘build’.
I watch him, a blonde head of hair bent over, squinting behind his black-rimmed square glasses, sitting in his Arne Jacobsen chair, outlined by the gentle glow of a Poul Henningsen PH lamp. He’s playing an album by the Danish pop group Alphabeats on his Danish Bang & Olufsen stereo, humming along out of tune and occasionally sipping from a Danish Bodum double-wall insulated beer glass that has appeared by his side. Yes that’s right, we’ve acclimatised so much that a Carlsberg at 5pm in winter is a perfectly normal Tuesday treat. I’ve never seen Lego Man look more at home.
�
�Look who drank the Danish Kool Aid…’ I mutter, wondering whether I should pin him down and swab his cheek to test for the 5-HTT gene. Maybe our child will be part-Viking and have the happy gene too, I think. Maybe that’s why our (80 per cent likely) son never sleeps and is such a kicker: he’s already marauding around inside me, all high on serotonin and the anticipation of snegles.
Lego Man, I can tell, wants to stay. But I’m still not totally convinced. Maybe you can take the girl out of the British cynicism but you can’t take the British cynicism out of the girl. Maybe…
* * *
Things I’ve learned this month:
Danes don’t mind paying their ludicrously high taxes
…because money can’t buy you happiness anyway
What can make you happy is being more trusting and living Danishly (hurrah!)
Lego Man may be a secret Viking
13. Christmas
God Jul!
There’s something else I should probably mention. I haven’t forgotten – it’s not as though Scandis are so ice-cool that they keep it all on the down low. No, Christmas here is A Huge Deal. And it starts at 8.57pm on the first Friday of November.
Lego Man and I are just finishing off a quiet dinner in The Big Town when an almighty roar starts up from the street. We look out of the window, curious now, only to see a few youths hanging around the porny pony and cats with boobs fountain. This is standard and all is as it should be with the world. A few moments later, a second cry can be heard. It echoes along the street, gathering momentum as other shouts and shrieks join it until there’s an unmistakable sense that Something Is Going To Happen. In a place where very little ever happens.
The sound of an engine can be heard and a truck rolls into view, complete with sound system and a countdown clock. The vehicle begins emitting a strange white substance. Great gouts of the stuff are expelled into the air, floating slowly downwards and smothering the street like a blanket.
The Year of Living Danishly Page 27
