The Year of Living Danishly (31 page)

‘And, er, how
do
you decorate with mushrooms?' I eye up the slimy thing now winking at me from my kitchen table. Friendly Neighbour looks at me as if I'm simple. Again.

‘In bouquets, of course!'

‘Of course…'

As well as fungus, Friendly Neighbour has very kindly lent us one of her ‘
nisser
' – a statuette of an alarming goblin-like creature. Folklore has it that
nisser
were responsible for determining how fruitful a farmer's harvest would be in days gone by. If a family kept its
nisse
(singular) happy and well stocked with rice porridge (evil spirits had simple tastes in yesteryear's Scandinavia), then the goblin would make sure things went well. Like a sort of lower-stakes miniature Mafioso. The idea now is that they're spies for Santa, reporting back on any bad behaviour. But for the most part they just look creepy.

‘It really does feel like he's watching you,' I remark to Lego Man once Friendly Neighbour's gone. The strange, mute, hunched figure appears to be staring into my very soul, no matter where I try to hide him.

‘I know – some joker left one in the office loo the other day,' Lego Man tells me with a shudder. ‘It was horrible. No one could relax enough to … you know.'

Office high jinks reach a new zenith this month as Danes start winding down for the holidays and, more importantly, planning their
julefrokost
. This is the annual Christmas lunch that's been held in most workplaces since the 1940s. My cultural integration coach Pernille Chaggar has warned me that Christmas lunches in Denmark can be, ‘six, eight, even
ten
hours long.'

‘There's an art to controlling yourself so that you can eat to the very end and sample each new dish that comes to the table,' she explains. These, apparently, include pickled herring, pork, beer and schnapps. It sounds like an antacid advert waiting to happen. ‘A lot of alcohol is usually consumed,' Pernille admits, ‘and people traditionally let their hair down and suspend some of the everyday boundaries, both in relation to the social hierarchy and generally accepted social conventions.' This is something I'm now familiar with, having observed the ‘controlled loss of control' approach to Danish drinking on numerous occasions since ‘Christmas' kicked off.

As partners aren't usually invited to witness the debauchery of the office lunch in Denmark, I'd expected to experience
julefrokost
vicariously through Lego Man's reports and those of other friends. So I'm touched when an invitation arrives to go to one myself as a lowly freelancer – and consider it my Bruce Parry-esque duty to accept.

I push open the doors of the old town hall to reveal a vast, grand, banqueting room crammed with tables and around 200 revellers already in full swing. I'm pretty sure my party isn't this large and wander around aimlessly trying to find someone who looks like they might be in charge. Music blasts, lights dazzle, and Vikings maraud, helping themselves to wine and food from a table laid out like some kind of Bacchanalian feast. I feel a little like I'm in a Baz Luhrmann film and am grateful when a familiar face smiles at me. The woman who invited me scoops me up and takes me to a table populated by people I partially recognise. They all exclaim in horror about how huge I am now and one observes that I look like ‘overstuffed ravioli'. Danes are nothing if not blunt. It's also fair to say that my
julefrokost
crew are already well lubricated and appear far more excited to see me than folk I've only met a few times have any right to be.

‘You're heeeerrreeeeee!
Now
we can begin!'

As Pernille predicted, herring is first up – big bowls of the stuff in various ‘flavours' from curry to cinnamon. It takes a brave seasoning to take on the heft of a pickled herring and the result is something of an oral assault, not for the delicate of stomach. The fish is eaten on rye bread and washed down with a shot of schnapps.

‘To help the herring swim!' they tell me as they drink. The tiny glasses are refilled for another toast and soon, every other bite is accompanied by a ‘
skål!
' (‘cheers') Next is a buffet of meat and fish, much of it of unidentifiable origin. I watch my fellow diners ladle a creamy sauce with cubes of something in it over sausages and pork, before discovering that the chunks are chicken.

‘It's a
chicken
sauce on
pork
?'

‘Yes,' the girl to the right of me nods, smiling. ‘You like it?'

I can't deny that it's tasty, but even a committed carnivore can have too much of a good thing.

Dessert is
risalamande
, a form of rice pudding mixed with whipped cream and chopped almonds with a whole almond hidden somewhere in the dish. The lucky reveller who finds the whole almond wins a prize, but has to conceal their discovery as long as possible by secreting said nut in their cheek. This is so that the rest of the party is forced to gobble down the entire vat of the creamy, lumpy dessert smothered in cherry sauce before the big reveal. By serving number two I'm ready for a lie down, but the rest of my group is just getting started. At the table next to us, a spirited game of
pakkeleg
starts up – an aggressive form of pass the parcel where, as far as I can make out, everyone brings a small wrapped gift and then throws a dice for the chance to steal other people's presents before stockpiling as many as possible for themselves.

Wine flows, faces become flushed and lips, blackened with Beaujolais, move animatedly. A few hands seem to be resting in places that perhaps they shouldn't – notably the thighs and bottoms of colleagues they'll presumably have to face on Monday morning in the cold semi-light of day. By the time coffee is served, several couples are sucking each other's faces like teenagers, up against walls or still in the seats that they plonked themselves into, several hours before.

‘So, what happens next?' I ask the girl next to me.

‘You mean them?' she looks at face-sucking couple #1. ‘I imagine they'll have sex. There are hotel rooms just upstairs,' she point directly above our heads.

‘Oh, no,' I thank her for her candidness but explain, ‘I meant more along the lines of how this group plan to spend the rest of the evening…'

‘Oh, that. Well, there'll be dancing, probably. And then who knows?'

At this point, my heavily pregnant Bruce Parry pioneering spirit starts to desert me and I say goodbye to my table-neighbours before attempting to slip away quietly. This doesn't go so well. In my enlarged state, personal space is compromised and on my way out I have to edge past various couplings. Thinking that I am exempt from this orgiastic annual ritual on account of being a) happily married, b) sober and c) up the duff, I exchange a few pleasantries with a fifty-something man while I wait to pick up my coat (aka Lego Man's oversized parka). I'm just re-robing and preparing to leave when he propositions me.

‘
What
?' is all I can splutter in response. Then, pointing at my stomach: ‘Really?!'

He gives a ‘
can't blame a chap for trying
' shrug before adding: ‘You know what they say – “pregnant, can't
get
pregnant”!'

I decline, fervently, and squeeze past more middle managers making out in stairwells before making a break for it and driving home.

The next day, we go for brunch with The Viking, Helena C and some other Danish friends and have a ‘
julefrokost
horror story amnesty' where everyone hands in their weapons of mass humiliation.

‘There are a lot of hookups,' admits Helena C. ‘It doesn't matter if you're married or not.'

Another girl tells us about a Christmas party fling she had some years back that made things decidedly awkward around the photocopier come January. And a third reveals how he and his team were forced to learn the dance from South Korean pop icon Psy's hit, ‘Gangnam Style', and then perform it to senior management.

‘It was weird,' he admits, still looking a little shaken. ‘Then afterwards, we all watched some porn,' he adds as a throwaway remark before taking a swig from his bottle of
julebryg
.

‘
Sorry?
'

‘What?' He looks up. ‘The bit about the dancing?'

‘
No
!' the party cry in unison.

‘The porn!' I say, far louder than was necessary and attracting the attention of the table next to us. ‘Sorry,' I murmur.

‘Oh,' he says, ‘
that
. Well…' he sets down his beer and starts, matter of factly: ‘The dance teacher had left, the financial director had finished pretending to ride me like a pony, and we started watching this movie, projected onto a whiteboard in this hotel conference room at 4pm in the afternoon. Then this man appeared on screen who looked a lot like Jens in our team—'

Lego Man shoots me a look that says, ‘
see, I told you a lot of people were called Jens in Denmark
'. I give him a look in return that says, ‘
not now – we're about to hear a story about porn at an office Christmas party. This outranks Lars–Mette–Jens-gate
'. Marital telepathy is a wonderful thing.

‘So anyway, we're all watching the guy who looks like Jens and thinking, “this is kind of weird”,' The Viking's friend goes on, ‘and then the guy in the film suddenly strips. He's totally naked, and then he starts getting it on with someone. And the
real
Jens sitting next to us bursts out laughing, saying, “Don't you recognise me?” Turned out it didn't just look like Jens, it
was
Jens. He'd had a career in porn before retraining in accountancy. He found the whole thing really funny, but I haven't been able to look at him the same way since…'

There's a lull in conversation after this. Turns out it's pretty hard to top a communal-screening-of-a-colleague-having-penetrative-sex story.

By the time Lego Man's
julefrokost
comes around, he's a little afraid of what the night might entail. So I'm relieved when he makes it home, apparently unscathed.

‘Well, how was it? Any porn? Promiscuity? Herring fights?'

‘Nothing remotely porny,' he says, sounding a little short-changed. ‘Turns out I work with a wholesome bunch. We started off with a
Top Gun
quiz—'

‘—What? Why? What
is
it about this country and Tom Cruise?'

‘—which naturally I aced,' he goes on.

A whole quiz on his specialist subject? Christmas really has come early for Lego Man
.

‘And then we sang a song about Volvos,' he adds, just casually, as he drops his bag on the bed and walks to the bathroom, slotting the head on our electric toothbrush.

‘I'm sorry,' I set down the book I've been reading and follow him in there, ‘I
thought
you just told me you and your high-powered colleagues spent the evening singing songs about Swedish family saloon cars…?'

‘That's right,' he says. ‘But not just any Volvo,' he has to raise his voice now to be heard over the whir of the toothbrush. ‘The Volvo B18–210,' he tells me, through a mouthful of minty foam. ‘There's even a song sheet, see?'

Dripping minty spittle all over our wooden floors, he walks back into the bedroom and fishes a stapled pamphlet of papers out of his work bag. I love that he has saved this for me. I love that he knows how happy this kind of thing makes me.

‘Wow,' I exclaim, wide-eyed, as I flick through and see that other sing-songs for the night included Cat Stevens's ‘Wild World' and the Ace of Base classic, ‘All That She Wants'. ‘And why,' I ask, ‘were you singing songs about Volvos?'

‘Apparently it's—'

‘—“
Tradition
”?'

‘Exactly. Everyone else knew the words already,' he nods at the lyric sheet. ‘It was in Danish but Lars helped me out with the lyrics – they were things like “it's got teak interiors” and “a great undercarriage”, and “we'll be together from now until eternity … I love my Volvo”.'

‘How festive…' I shake my head in wonder. Every time I think I've got this country sussed, it throws me a curveball.

‘Yeah,' Lego Man spits into the bathroom sink and sticks his head under the tap to rinse his mouth. ‘It's all a bit of a blur after that … in fact, I might need to go and have a lie down…'

After all this partying, it would be easy to lose sight of the true meaning of Christmas: the obligation to cook a meal no one chooses to eat at any other time of year and spend days cooped up inside with people you haven't seen for the last twelve months. The Danes have a saying: ‘guests are like fish – after three days they start to smell', and yet somehow we've signed up to have house guests for
seven whole days
over Christmas. I'm very fond of my in-laws. They are lovely people. But a week-long visit while I'm nine months pregnant is a little more than I'd bargained for.
At least
, I tell myself,
there'll be plenty going on in The Big Town, what with Danes being so crazy about Christmas and all
.

‘Oh grasshopper, how much you still have to learn!' American Mom shakes her head when I tell her my action plan. ‘Sure, there's a whole bunch of parties in the
run up
to Christmas, but in the week itself, no one does anything. It's all about spending time with the family.'

This is a setback. Then a bright idea strikes me:
Perhaps we could combine our various families in some sort of expat jamboree!

‘So, er,' I ask, ‘what are you and the kids doing for Christmas?'

American Mom gives me a ‘
well, duh
!' look: ‘We're going back to the States, of course!'

‘Oh. Right then. Well, enjoy.'

‘We will! Good luck!'

American Mom wasn't exaggerating. During the Christmas week in Jutland, everything is closed. And I mean EVERYTHING. I look on the
kommune
website's calendar to see if there might be a few rogue activities or events still taking place but see only a row of blank squares. I scroll through the days.
Nothing, nothing
, and then, just as those wise men must have felt on noticing something twinkly up there on the horizon, I spot a
star
on the calendar.