The Year of Living Danishly (13 page)

‘We could get him a flag!' I exclaim with glee, two coffees in, the following Saturday.

‘What?'

‘A Swiss one! Like the Danes do for their birthdays! And then we could fly it from our flagpole so it's the first thing he sees when he arrives!'

‘Couldn't we just put up a Danish one? It's not far off—'

‘—No!' I try to interject though a mouthful of muesli. Unable to say it rather than spray it, I point to a story on the BBC news website about how the Swiss president was greeted by Ukraine's prime minister waving a Danish flag. ‘It's not the same thing at all,' I manage through a cheek full of oats, ‘—and no,' I pre-empt his next suggestion, ‘not even with a bit of Tipp-Ex. We need to do it properly.'

I'm already programming the address of the flag shop into the satnav, removing Lego Man's half-drunk mug from his hands and putting an arm in the sleeve of a jacket when he realises that he has no choice but to agree.

Two hours later and we're unfurling the thing to winch up pre-arrival. The Swiss flag, as Ukrainian PM Arseniy Yatsenyuk discovered a little too late, is slightly different to the Dannebrog, with a fatter white cross in the centre of a bright red rectangle. We get it up there and admire our handiwork as it wafts in the wind.

‘It looks like an enormous army knife,' Lego Man murmurs wistfully, harking back to his hunter-gatherer days in the scouts. He starts getting all misty-eyed about past jamborees before I remind him of the time and say we really must get going.

Lego Man pops the flag a solemn scouting salute then fetches the car keys and we drive to the airport to pick up Swiss Friend.

I'm high on social-interaction-plus-sugar (having cracked open the ‘starter chocolate box' Swiss Friend gave me ‘for the journey') when we arrive back at Sticksville. The first thing we see as we turn off the road toward our house is the flag, flapping smartly against a bright blue sky.

But before I can even hold out a chocolate-clagged finger and say, ‘
Look, look, we're flying your flag!
' we notice a gathering of elderly bearded gentlemen around our pole, so to speak.

‘Is that my welcome committee?' Swiss Friend asks.

‘Perhaps they're admiring
our new flag
,' suggests Lego Man, nodding towards the new installation, ‘see?'

Swiss Friend clocks the tribute, holds a hand to his chest, and says he is deeply moved. ‘Do the old men come with it? Is that some sort of Danish welcoming tradition as well?'

‘Er, no.'

As we get out of the car, Messrs Beard & Beard and their follically gifted friends move towards us, en masse, like something out of a zombie film. Only slower.

‘Hello?' Lego Man addresses them, trying to sound upbeat.

One of the beardies frowns and makes some guttural vowel sounds I can't quite decipher. I'm just about to give him my whole, ‘
Undskyld, jeg ikke forstår
' (‘sorry, I don't understand') spiel when he utters another sentence and I catch the words ‘
Schweiziske
' (‘Swiss'), ‘
forbudt
' (‘forbidden') and ‘
Dansk flag
'. Then, the ringleader Mr Beard points upwards, his face quite puce.

‘Do you think perhaps he wants you to take it down?' Swiss Friend asks.

I mime
‘I'll just go and look up what rule we've broken and promise to take the flag down if we're contravening anything'
by pretending to type at an imaginary keyboard, then feeding rope through two hands stacked vertically (not bad, eh? Charades: one of my most useless talents) and we usher Swiss Friend over the threshold.

Safely inside, Lego man wonders out loud how on earth anyone can object to the Swiss flag. ‘I mean, they're
neutral!
' he says as he flicks on the kettle and clanks mugs onto the kitchen counter. ‘All they've ever done is produced great watches and chocolates!'

‘And Roger Federer,' I chip in. ‘Who can hate R-Fed? The man made
mandigans
cool, for god's sake.'

‘
Mandigans
?' Swiss Friend looks blank.

‘Man-cardigans.'

‘Oh.'

‘And then there's Ursula Andress,' Lego Man goes on, sloshing boiling water into a teapot as well as all over the kitchen work surfaces, before slinging in a couple of Yorkshire Tea bags.

‘Ursula and who?' Swiss Friend asks. Lego Man sets down the teapot and stares at him in horror.

‘White bikini?
Dr No
?' My husband is just looking as though he might be reconsidering his friendship with Swiss Friend when there's a knock on the door. Mr Beard is back. And this time he's brought back-up in the form of a third hirsute septuagenarian.

‘Hi, sorry, we're just about to get on to this, er, flag issue,' I start, helplessly, as he holds up his hand, palm facing me, and closes his eyes. It is frustratingly impossible to have a conversation with someone who has their eyes shut. It's as though they've already zoned out and anything you may have to say is of no interest. I bite my tongue and wait.

‘As you do not speak good enough Danish,' the original Mr Beard says, finally, ‘we have taken the liberty of translating and printing out the rules for flags in Denmark.'

Mr Beard III proffers an A4 white sheet. I reach out to take it and am surprised to find it stiff and shiny.

‘And you
laminated
it?'

Mr Beard III waves his hand as if to say, ‘it's nothing'.

‘He has a machine,' Mr Beard I adds, by way of explanation.

‘You did that
just now?
'

‘Yes. It is important to get this right,' Mr Beard III says gruffly.

‘It is not your fault if you did not know the correct rules,' Mr Beard I adopts a more conciliatory tone. ‘But now you will know. And this will not happen again.'

‘No,' I find myself agreeing, like a disgraced schoolgirl or a British minister put on the spot by Joanna Lumley over Gurkhas.

‘You will find that the Danish flag is very important here,' Mr Beard I goes on. ‘If you have any further questions, just ask me.'

‘Right. OK. And thank you. And you are?'

But he turns and leaves without letting me know his name. Again.

When Lego Man and Swiss Friend have finished laughing, I read the laminated rules out loud:

I break off. ‘That sounds awfully dramatic!'

‘Just imagine the power you've been wielding without even realising it!' Swiss Friend takes a gulp of tea, amused and clearly enjoying himself now.

‘What?' Lego Man interrupts.

‘—That's what the laminated sheet says…' I go on:

‘How do you
wear out
a flag?' Swiss Friend asks. ‘Too much waving?' We are stumped.

‘Blimey, there's a big risk of starting a war with these flags…' Lego Man interrupts again. I tell him strictly that since the Danish defence budget is only 1.3 per cent of the GDP and military service is notoriously easy to evade, another war is the last thing we want on our conscience, before reading the remainder.

‘Extraordinary!' Lego Man is now retrieving three bottles of beer from the fridge, having decided that this afternoon's excitement calls for something stronger than tea. ‘Who'd have thought we'd have risked legal action, and/or incited international military unrest, all in one day?'

‘Still, it was a nice gesture, I was very touched,' Swiss Friend offers, taking a swig of beer. ‘I guess there was just no way of knowing just how seriously Danes take their flag.'

In the UK, flying the St George's Cross has become a bit of a joke – the preserve of the English Defence League or football hooligans. The Scottish flag, the St Andrew's Cross, screams affiliation with the Scottish National Party (or BDSM, depending on your proclivities…). The Irish tricolour means St Patrick's Day, Guinness and theme pubs. The Welsh dragon makes me think of rugby, or some sort of male voice choir. During the London 2012 Olympics, the Union Jack had a brief reprise as a symbol of pride rather than a suspect political statement. Suddenly, our flag meant Stephen Fry; French and Saunders; ginger nuts and Churchill. Overnight, it became OK to be proud of our nation – for a fortnight, at least. And it felt good. So I can't help thinking that the Danes might be on to something here with all their flag waving.

Lego Man and I carefully fold up the Swiss banner and we send our soon-to-be-40 bachelor home with this and a care-package of all things Danish to remember the weekend by. We won't be hoisting the Union Jack any time soon (‘And you can forget about the Jolly Roger,' Lego Man tells me), but I'm considering adopting the Dannebrog as my own during our time here. We're five months into the experiment now and I'm starting to feel more settled – possibly, even
relaxed
.
Which has to be one step closer to becoming more contented
, I tell myself. And if national pride and traditions really can make you happier, then I want in. I may not be a born and bred Dane, but I'm doing my best during our year of living Danishly to go native. So maybe I can adopt some of the local customs and traditions and things worth shouting about while I'm here. Maybe I can be an honorary patriotic Dane. I resolve to live by the bastardised mantra of 1970s folk-rocker Stephen Sills and ‘love the one I'm with'. For a year or so, anyway.

Things I've learned this month:

1. You can set fire to the Danish flag but a tardy hoist is criminal
   
2. Religion can't make you happy, but traditions and special cake can
   
3. Danish parents are remarkably understanding and generous
   
4. Patriotism is good for you
   
5. The dog needs more training
   

Footnote

*
The Danes, I've noticed, love an emoticon, especially to dilute the impact after saying something that could be construed as confrontational, critical or rude.

6. June

Just a Girl

The sea glistens invitingly, the sky is a cloudless cobalt and Lego Man has taken to wearing pastel-coloured shorts, like an extra from a Wham! video circa 1983. This can mean only one thing: summer has finally arrived in Sticksville-on-Sea. And yet surprisingly it's this month that my quest for happiness takes a blow.

Things start promisingly enough. Watching white triangles of sailboats meander from side to side as they wind their way out of the marina while we kick back on wicker loungers drinking iced spritzers, it feels as though we could be in the Côte d'Azur (
off season
, mind, let's not get too carried away…). To my astonishment, it gets warm here. Really warm. As though the lack of pollution (or any kind of drama, or excitement) allows the sun to beam down more strongly. The earth radiates heat and the whole of Jutland looks as though it's being viewed through an Instagram filter. We're forced to buy a parasol to keep from burning in the garden, but notice that the sun-thirsty Danes all around us prefer to oil up and
bask
until their skin turns to leather.

Living by the sea suddenly stops feeling bleak and takes on a jolly holiday feeling. We wake up each morning and immediately calculate how many hours it is until we can go and play on the beach. And because we're so far north it's light until past 11pm, so there are a good seven hours of sun at the end of the working day. Our quiet beachside village is now bustling with barbecuers, swimmers, canoeists and sailors fitting in a second shift of leisure after a not-so-hard day at the office. Having never quite got over the shame of being officially cautioned for attempting to cook burgers on a disposable aluminium tray of coal on Clapham Common one summer, I can't quite get used to the fact that lighting a fire wherever you fancy seems totally OK here. Not only that, but the
kommune
(the local borough or state) lay on picnic tables, a gazebo and a regularly replenished store of chopped wood to help you on your way. Lego Man can barely believe this untold bounty – ‘
Free
wood? No wonder the Danes are happy!' – and I can't help agreeing that when it comes to embracing the good life, the smart folk of Jutland seem to have got things sorted.

Five friends from school come to stay and I bathe in the familiarity and concentrated dose of oestrogen they bring with them. We talk fast – not at the pace I realise I've been adopting out here, over-enunciating every word to try and make myself understood. We catch up on each other's news. We eat
snegles
. We take group pictures at the porny pony fountain in The Big Town. It's A Lot Of Fun. A couple of them have small children, so there are daily Skype sessions before toddler bedtimes, reminding me of how much I want that life too. I love being a godmother to two utterly edible small people back home, and delight in being a not-at-all-related ‘special auntie' to several more, but it's not the same. And I still have to swallow down the lump that appears in my throat sometimes when I think about this. But I'm really happy to have my old friends with me for a while and when they leave, I feel lifted, reinvigorated, and ready to take on another month – or six – of living Danishly.

Midsummer Night is the big festival this month, though confusingly Danes shift this to the 23rd rather than the 21st of June to mark
Sankt Hans Eve
– the night before the saint's day of John the Baptist. It's celebrated with a big bonfire that Danes begin building a month in advance so that by the third week of June, Denmark's countryside is dotted with impressive twiggy mountains.

Lego Man, the dog and I traipse along the beach, wriggling our toes/paws in the sand on the way to our first
Sankt Hans
celebration. The air smells of woodsmoke and sausages and the dog, who lives for sniffs and snacks, is in heaven. The locals are out in force and I spot the Mr Beards (I–III). I give them a tentative ‘
Hej!
' as we pass and miraculously, they nod in response. And then they
speak
to us.

‘We see you have been getting the recycling right…' Mr Beard I comments.

‘…But your dog still seems pretty wild,' cautions Mr Beard II, lighting a sleek black Popeye pipe and giving it a puff.

I thank them for their input and we walk on, not hugely easy as the dog seems to have become mesmerised by fire, like early man.

We're meeting up with Friendly Neighbour, The Viking and my
new
Danish friend who looks a lot like a blonde Helena Christensen (and she's nice – I know, life isn't fair). There's also an assortment of other waifs and strays that each of them have brought along, and I eye up the picnic supplies and copious quantities of beer contributed to see us through. Tucked into The Viking's surprisingly well-appointed picnic basket is a Tupperware container filled with dough that he tells us is for ‘
snobrød
' or ‘winding-bread'. To celebrate the feast day of John the Baptist, Danes wind strips of dough around a stick (efficiently prepared in advance and well-soaked in water) to cook by the heat of the bonfire. Lego Man makes the mistake of asking why, to which we get the now familiar response, en masse, like an upbeat Greek chorus: ‘
It's tradition!
'

A man who looks a lot like Robert Plant starts making a speech over a PA system but he's interrupted by screeches of ear-splitting feedback. He taps the microphone a few times, which does nothing other than add a thumping noise to the cacophony, before finally giving up and shouting to be heard.

‘Who's he?' I whisper to The Viking.

‘Oh he's a local MP. In Copenhagen and places like that you'd have someone famous doing this bit, but here we usually get a politician or a local radio DJ or something.'

‘How showbiz…' I murmur, as The Viking turns back to give Robert Plant his full attention. ‘And, er, what's he saying?' My Danish still leaves much to be desired and random mumblings in a rural Jutland accent are beyond me.

‘He's just telling everyone what's happening – next we're going to sing.'

‘Oh good,' says Lego Man, as a lady in her later years ambles over to hand out song sheets. ‘And what are we singing about?'

The Viking sighs slightly and I wonder whether he's regretting befriending a couple of dumb Brits. He points at the song sheet in his hand: ‘This one's called “
Vi elsker vort land
”, which means, “We love our country”.'

Of course it does!
I think.

A woman who's clearly had too much sun in her time and now resembles a mahogany-hued marmoset starts to slam out a few chords on an electric keyboard with one hand while smoking a cigarette with the other. The crowd begins to sing and Marmoset Woman joins in, trying not to set the sheet music alight during page turns.

I try to concentrate on the song, despite no prior knowledge of the tune or the words, but get distracted by a young boy who starts climbing the man-made mountain, dragging some sort of Flamenco-dancer scarecrow behind him. Having positioned the unfortunate offering on top of the stick pile, he proceeds to punch it in the face. Once the small child has dismounted, a woman stuffs some extra straw around the base of the bonfire then sets light to it with a torch. Flames begin to crackle and lick their way up, illuminating the figure astride the pyre. I can make out a hat covering scraggly wool-hair and a cape of some description over the top of a frilly red dress. Some wit has also seen fit to draw an unhappy face on the papier mâché globe of a head.

‘I haven't revisited my convent school copy of the King James Bible for some years,' I whisper to Lego Man, ‘but I'm pretty sure John the Baptist was beheaded, not burned alive. And he wasn't
famed
for his Flamenco dancing…'

The Viking, overhearing, chips in: ‘Oh, it's not Saint John up there. It's just the eve of his saint's day.'

‘Right … so, who's
he
?' I say, pointing at the unhappy felt-tipped face as it explodes into flames, sending a cheer around the crowd.

‘
She
,' he corrects me, ‘is a witch.'

At this moment, the unfortunate creature's synthetic red frills catch fire and black plumes of smoke start billowing out to sea. There's whooping and clapping and a few of our party capture the moment on camera phones.

‘You
still burn witches
?' I ask in horror.

‘Just tonight,' he tries to explain. ‘That's what the bonfires are for. It's tr—'

‘—Don't tell me, “
it's tradition
”?'

‘How did you guess?'

‘Just a hunch.'

‘And the punching in the face bit,' Lego Man asks, ‘was that part of the tradition too?'

‘No, that kid was just a brat,' replies The Viking.

‘Right. And the Flamenco outfit?'

‘Just whatever someone could find, I suspect.'

A gust of wind fans the flames and soon the crudely fashioned ‘witch' is just a blackened chicken-wire mesh on a stick. There's some clapping and Brat Boy and his friends begin laughing uproariously. Another song starts up and we're encouraged to huddle around the dying fire to start baking our bread kebabs, but I've rather lost my appetite.

Friendly Neighbour, observing my consternation, attempts to console me.

‘We have to burn the witch to ward off evil spirits,' she says, as though this is the most natural thing in the world.

‘Right…'

‘Witches are very active around Midsummer Night's eve. So we burn a few to make the rest go to Germany—'

‘
What
?' This is getting weirder by the minute.

‘To Bloksbjerg, in the mountains, where all the witches get together.'

‘
Why
? Why would they go to Germany?'
For cheap lager and cheese?

This is met by general shrugging before The Viking announces, audibly tipsy now: ‘I don't know, it's
Germany
. Bad stuff happens there!' This, it seems, is the best anyone can come up with to explain away the mild xenophobia towards Denmark's powerful southern neighbour.

It's at this point that I'm given a semi-inebriated beach-side history lesson by The Viking, who studied the subject at university, occasionally corrected by Friendly Neighbour and Helena C, keen that we don't end up with a totally skewed impression of their country.

I learn that the burning of ‘witches' in Denmark started in the 16th century when the church took great pleasure in convicting and sentencing women to death by flames. The practice officially stopped in 1693, when 74-year-old Anne Palles was burned as a sorceress for having ‘enchanted' a bailiff, caused the sudden death of a woman her husband danced with and been responsible for a poor yield on a farm on which she had once taken a pee.

‘Really? Is that last part true?' I ask suspiciously, only to be met with vehement nodding. At this wee-based revelation, the dog starts to whimper slightly, as though conscious that he's done far worse on many of the farms around here. He backs away from the dying embers and hides behind Lego Man's legs.

‘So you see, we haven't burned
actual
women for ages!' The Viking ends his tutorial brightly. ‘It's just been fashionable to burn
straw
witches since the 1900s.'

‘We don't mean anything by it,' Friendly Neighbour tries to assure me, ‘it's just tr—'

‘“
Tradition
”?'

‘
Yes
!' the chorus responds in now-drunken unison.

‘But I thought Denmark was meant to be this great place for gender equality? With a long and illustrious history of promoting women's rights?' I am not drunk enough to let this go.

‘Sure,' The Viking shrugs, ‘but not
witches
' rights!'

‘You do know witches aren't real, right?'

There is laughter and Lego Man goes into peacekeeping mode: ‘Don't worry, we're talking about hundreds of years ago. And things have been pretty good since then, right?'

‘Well…' Friendly Neighbour pulls a face that makes her look like a plasticine figure from
Wallace & Gromit
.

‘What?'

‘Well, you know all the big red buildings round here?'

‘The old hospitals?' I ask, thinking she means the 1920s red-brick institutions that make up most of the village and are now populated by bearded retirees.

‘Ye-es,' she answers, sounding a little unsure. ‘Only they weren't quite
hospitals
…'

‘They weren't? That's what the estate agent told us.'

‘No. They were institutions. For the mentally defective.' I wonder whether to politely suggest a more politically correct term, but she goes on. ‘These were the men's buildings,' she waves a hand at the looming institutions further up from the beach, ‘set up by Christian Keller, the famous Danish doctor. The guy whose statue's up there on the hill, you know?'

‘The one with the big 'tash?'

‘That's him. But the women—' she takes a deep breath, ‘—well, have you ever noticed the island as you cross over on the way from Funen to Zealand?'

Funen is the island to the east of the Jutland peninsular, with Zealand the island even further east that's home to Copenhagen and, as I describe it to folk back home, ‘all the fun stuff'. Even with my woeful sense of direction, I know where Friendly Neighbour is talking about. This is novel.

‘Yes! I do! We've driven over it a few times. Why?'

‘Well that's Sprogø, where the defective women were sent. Only there wasn't always much wrong with them…'

Sprogø, it emerges, was used for the containment of women deemed ‘pathologically promiscuous', ‘morally retarded', ‘sexually frivolous' or accused of ‘
løsagtig
' (lewd behaviour). The institution founded by Christian Keller in 1923 was essentially a prison for women who'd had unmarried sex, lovers or a child out of wedlock. Not that locking them up on an all-female island necessarily prevented any further shenanigans. Sprogø often swarmed with men visiting it in the hope of meeting ‘easy women', though nobody seemed to think that the men setting sail for sex were much of a problem.