The Year of Living Danishly (24 page)

This all sounds lovely but I'm slightly concerned that he might end up with food poisoning. I delicately opt out of a foraged supper on account of our unborn child and the loaf of worthy rye bread I've got to work through as Lego Man sets about scrubbing and de-bearding several dozen barnacled black shells.

‘Are you sure they're safe to eat?'

“Yeah, as long as they're tightly closed and then open when you cook them, apparently, they're usually fine.'

‘“
Usually
”?'

Lego Man nods as he scrubs: ‘I Googled it. There's a
very
small chance of diarrhoea, vomiting, paralysis or death—'

‘Oh good.'

‘—but that's only in extreme cases of
neurotoxicological poisoning
.'

‘Great…'

Lego Man once dated a doctor and I sometimes suspect that his gung-ho attitude to illness is down to a secret belief that he's actually
done
the seven years of medical training himself.

‘Anyway,' he nods at the mussels as he scrubs at them with the kitchen brush despite my pleas, ‘you'd pay a lot of money for these in a shop.'

Half an hour later and we're sitting down together to eat. Me: an open sandwich of cheese and tomato on black rye bread. Hunter-gatherer: a steaming bowl of mussels cooked in what I have to admit is a delicious-smelling white wine and shallot sauce of his own creation and garnished with home-grown parsley. Ben, Bo and Trine would be proud.

‘So, what's the verdict?' I enquire, as Lego Man slips in a shell-full of his first foraged seafood.

He pauses, closing his eyes rather dramatically and savouring the moment, before answering: ‘Perfect!'

‘Good.' I smile at the strangeness of it all: we'd never have imagined ourselves going so native in Scandi-land this time six months ago, let alone this time last year in London. ‘Happy?' I ask. Lego Man eyes me suspiciously.

‘Are you asking me because you really care or are you just using me as research material?'

‘Both?'

‘OK then. Well,' he looks around, at his design-festooned home, his sea view, his faithful, if scruffy, dog, and his bowl of home-foraged food, ‘I'd say I'm a nine out of ten.' He reaches a white wine, shallot and mussel-smeared hand across the table and rests it on mine and we both feel a little warm and fuzzy inside.

Things I've learned this month:

1. Copenhageners get all the best food in Denmark
   
2. Ditto cultural offerings
   
3. …and lighting shops
   
4. I am living in a culinary black hole, apart from the foraged seafood and pastries (which I shall henceforth only be sampling twice weekly. Sad face.)
   
5. It's A Good Thing that food goes off so quickly here, as this means it's fresh
   
6. Living Danishly is making Lego Man happy
   
7. …and maybe, just maybe, I'm coming around to the place, too
   

10. October

In Sickness & in Health

After Lego Man's foray into foraging and having learned that the traditional, seasonal Nordic diet is one of the healthiest in the world, we're feeling pretty good about living Danishly as we plough towards winter. In fact, with morning sickness in retreat and a newfound energy, I'm feeling remarkably well in general. Although I'm not pounding the treadmill in a gym as I used to, I'm getting more fresh air and exercise than ever before – walking the dog or embarking on non-Lycra-necessitating bike outings. And because we're dining at home most nights (due to dire restaurant offerings in our part of Jutland – thanks for the reminder, Trine), we're eating more healthily too.

But then Lego Man has to go away for work, and I'm left behind with just the dog and deadlines for company. I've been advised not to travel until after my due date now, which means I won't see family or old friends for a long time, unless they come to me. I'll miss my cousin's wedding and several big birthdays. It also means that the decision about where to have the baby has been taken out of our hands. We're staying until the end of January, when we'll have to decide how we feel about a second year of living Danishly. I've got a few months of ‘research' left to go, and luckily, with a fortnight of maternity-related medical appointments ahead of me, I'm about to become a lot better acquainted with Denmark's healthcare system. It all starts with a visit to meet my midwife in The Big Town.

‘Your lady cave looks
very
fine,' a large woman with flaxen hair scraped back into a ponytail tells me. She has big, fleshy hands that look as though they could deliver twelve sets of twins an hour if necessary.

‘My “
lady cave
”?' I think back to GCSE biology but am pretty sure I've never heard this phrase before. She gives my abdomen a prod by way of explanation. ‘Ah, my “
womb
”?'

‘Sure…' she frowns as she carries on scanning. I'm lying on a wooden table with cool jelly smeared across my middle as the baby is checked for abnormalities. Between my still-limited Danish vocabulary (despite months of lessons) and the midwife's amusing memory lapses when it comes to English gynaecological terms, we're muddling through.

‘And here is the, how do you say, “mother's cake”? Big thing. Feeds the foetus.'

‘“
Placenta
”?'

She nods: ‘That. It is looking
quite great
.'

Having never given much thought to what my internal organs look like, I'm relieved to hear that they're satisfactory, though I'm slightly alarmed that innards are now subjected to the same visual appraisals as the rest of the female form (
What if I have fat kidneys? Or a wrinkly brain? Oh, wait…
). I make a mental note to go home and Google what a ‘normal' womb and placenta look like as the midwife sets down her tools and addresses me face on: ‘Now, what about sex?' I wasn't expecting this.

‘What
about
sex? Shouldn't we be having it? Should we be having
more
of it?'

‘I mean, do you want to know the sex? Of the baby?'

Aha
! ‘Um, well, can you tell? I mean, if you can see either way, maybe tell me, but otherwise don't worry…' For someone who's paralysed by indecision over what to have for lunch most days, a choice on this scale is, frankly, terrifying.

The midwife pokes around a bit more: ‘Hmm … labia or scrotum … scrotum or labia…' she muses, tilting the screen in my direction. All I can make out on the black and white fuzzy image is something that looks a lot like a blob of papier mâché mix. ‘What do you think?' She asks. I have no idea. So she answers for both of us: ‘I think …
scrotum
.'

‘You “think”?'
Is this roll-out-the-blue-bunting time? Should I be buying books on how to raise boys? Will I need some sort of coaching to work out how the heck the only daughter of a single mum who went to an all-girls school can possibly parent a miniature male?

‘I am … 80 per cent sure there is a…' She proceeds to do some elaborate charades to indicate that she thinks it's a male foetus, including a particularly vivid mime for ‘penis'.

Once I've re-robed and mentally adjusted for the fact that it's ‘80 per cent likely' our child is male, we sit down to discuss The Birth.

‘So, pain,' she kicks off.

I look around for an escape route but remember that the only door in here was locked in case of interruptions. Instead, I stare helplessly at government information posters showing the various things that can go wrong during childbirth and the alarming row of metal implements glinting at me from the windowsill.
Just. Breathe
. I coach myself.

‘OK,' I quiver. ‘I'd like everything they've got, please.'

‘Right then,' she sits, pen poised above my notes. ‘I will write, “
oxygen as a last resort
”.'

I wonder whether I've heard her right.

‘“
Oxygen
”? What about an epidural?'

What I'm really hoping for is some new out-of-body-experience-causing (but entirely safe) general anaesthetic to be discovered in the next three months that will render any agony obsolete.

‘The “princess stick”? Oh, we don't like to use that if we can help it.'

‘Sorry, “
princess stick
”?'

‘That's what we joke about epidurals!'

I'm not laughing. ‘Real Danes', it turns out, don't need epidurals. ‘Princessy types' may have a mini-epidural if absolutely necessary but are only given half measures, ‘so you can feel enough pain to push,' she tells me. ‘I will make a note in your file that you request this. Then when you arrive, they'll know you're an anxious mother-to-be.' Brilliant. I'm already a princessy, anxious, Viking
failure
. And there are still months to go.
Sheesh
.

‘So I have to give birth with just
half
an epidural, gas and air?'

‘Oh no, we don't do gas.'

‘What?'

‘We don't think it's very good. What we can offer you is a bee sting.'

This doesn't sound promising, but I'm desperate.

‘
OK
…?'

‘This is where we prick you with a needle in the back of the hand so that you're distracted from the big pain by a smaller, different pain…' she trails off at this point, possibly put off by my expression that I suspect conveys something along the lines of,
‘If anyone does that to me, I will punch them in the face.'

‘…but perhaps we'll just stick to air and the mini princess stick, for now…'

I leave, traumatised, and seek out cake with Helena C for consolation. I explain about pain-reliefgate and she nods knowingly, telling me that she gave birth to both her girls with nothing but an iron will and profanity-laden threats to divorce her husband. I'm in shock.

‘So are Danes quite anti-drugs?'

‘That depends,' she tells me, ‘on the drugs.'

Danes, I discover, have the highest levels of antidepressant use in Europe according to the OECD. It's thought that the increasing ‘work stress' I learned all about back in February, as well as the use of medication in milder cases could explain the rising consumption levels.

‘Of course, we're also fairly relaxed when it comes to non-prescription drugs, too,' Helena C tells me. Jutland teens, I learn, tend to ‘dabble' a fair bit because ‘it can be a bit boring growing up here.'

Danes demonstrated their liberalism in 2013 when the country's first state-funded drug consumption rooms opened in Copenhagen. The initiative hit the headlines worldwide but most Danes didn't get too het up about it and there are now rooms in each of Denmark's main cities and some smaller towns too. Locals haven't put up much opposition and police steer clear of the safe rooms, the theory being that giving users a safe place to take drugs will prevent deadly overdoses. The plan is thought to be working, although statistics to prove this are pending. The whole approach is in marked contrast to Sweden's strict zero-tolerance policy – something that's earned them one of the lowest illicit drug consumption rates in Europe but led to a high number of drug-related deaths, as addicts fear seeking help for overdoses.

‘So I can't have a full epidural, but I
can
take smack?' I ask Helena C.

‘It looks that way, yes,' she tells me.

Strangely, the Danes' liberal attitude to non-pregnancy related drugs doesn't extend to remedies for the common cold, as I found out when Lego Man was laid up with man flu the week before last. There are no Lemsip or Night Nurse equivalents and my attempts to procure paracetamol were rewarded with a single, dolly-sized packet sufficient to soothe the fever of a very small hamster. This, I learn, is because a teenage girl took too many some years back and so the state clamped down on the amount that could be sold in any one transaction without a prescription. When something similar happened in the UK, the limit was set at sixteen in the shops and 32 in pharmacies. But in Denmark, it's ten.
Ten!
Just enough to get you through a single day before you have to drag your delirious, fever-addled body back for more. There are, however, ways around this. During my last exchange at the local pharmacy, the woman behind the counter took pity on me and told me that she could only sell me ten without a prescription, unless it was ‘an
emergency
'.

I was just about to accept the micro-dose and be on my way when she lowered her chin and looked up at me knowingly. ‘
Is
it an emergency?' She tilted her head and nodded slightly, coaxing me to agree.

‘Er … yes?'

‘So you're
telling me
that this is an emergency?' She asked again, nodding slowly.

‘Well, no,' I started to panic under the pressure, ‘not really, it's just man flu—' The pharmacist shook her head furiously until I corrected myself: ‘I mean,
yes
, yes it is. It's
definitely
an emergency.'

‘Great!' She beamed, before handing over
two
mini packets. ‘Feel better soon!'

In spite of the odd generous pharmacist, Viking spirit dictates that Danes stick to natural remedies wherever possible when it comes to minor ailments. ‘We tend to make do with hot tea,
hygge
, and maybe some schnapps,' Helena C tells me.

Ah, booze. I suspected it wouldn't be long before this came up in a discussion about health in Denmark.

‘Danes drink a lot. And I mean A Lot,' says Helena C. I tell her that this is something I'd gleaned during my first week here. There's a running joke that the reason Danes seem so happy when they fill in Eurobarometer surveys is that they're always drunk. Danes are among the highest drinkers in Europe, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), consuming 11–12 litres of pure alcohol per person per year. And Danish teenagers drink nearly twice as much as other Europeans their age (so say WHO reports). I can feel an empathy hangover coming on just thinking about it. Studies from the Danish National Centre for Social Research show that young people in Denmark are learning how to drink from their parents' approach to alcohol, characterised as ‘controlled loss of control'. In other words, Danes are very ordered and controlled – until they're
not
. Until it's a planned party, or a Friday night, or there's an event with schnapps involved. Then, they let their Viking tresses down and things get messy (and I'm British – I
know
messy). ‘It's like we reserve the right to damage ourselves by drinking too much if we want to, and we don't always think about the impact,' Helena C tells me.

The same is true of sex here. Despite Denmark's prowess as a nation of sexually liberated Scandis, as I found out back in July, Danes aren't always careful. A recent YouGov survey placed Denmark in the top spot for STI's in Europe and a recent survey from the Danish health authority found that only 56 per cent of 18–25 year olds used a condom the last time they slept with a new partner.

Another health contradiction is smoking in Denmark. Once I'd got over the shock of seeing people smoking while cycling on their daily commute to work, I began to notice that every second Dane I encountered was partially obscured by a small grey cloud. Danes smoke with zeal and tobacco use in Denmark has been found to be a contributing factor to approximately 14,000 deaths a year, according to WHO. The World Cancer Research Fund awarded Denmark another ‘first' in 2012 when it was discovered that women here have the highest rates of lung cancer in the world, and Denmark also tops the overall worldwide cancer charts for all types of cancer in both sexes.

‘You see people smoking everywhere here, even outside hospitals,' comments American Mom when I get her take on this as a fellow ‘outsider'. ‘I went in for a check-up with my daughter and there was this guy pushing past us on the way out, wheeling his IV drip, barely able to walk. Then the first thing he did when he got into the fresh air was to light up a cigarette. You'd never see that in the US.' I confess to her that this is something you see a fair bit in UK.

‘That's because your healthcare's free as well!' she rails. ‘You take it for granted, you think the state will sort you out!'

This last part is true – most Danes, and probably Brits too, do think that a free national health service will take care of them if they really need it. But are Danes taking their
health
for granted?

I ask The Viking what he thinks when he joins Helena C and me later on for dinner.

‘No! Not “
for granted
”, he scoffs at first, before ordering a beer and a burger. ‘OK, sure there's a lot of smoking and drinking—'

‘—And unprotected sex,' I add, helpfully.

‘—Yes, and that,' he concedes.