The Year of Living Danishly (7 page)

Lego isn't just another business in Denmark – it's a way of life. A cultural beacon inspiring a cult-like dedication. Danes are proud of their country's most famous export, which now has parents in socked feet cursing as they stand on upturned blocks in 130 countries worldwide. There is a massive online community of adult fans of Lego, or AFOLs as they like to call themselves (‘Not “geeks who can't get girlfriends”?' I ask Lego Man, doubtfully. ‘No,' he tells me, sternly. ‘I'll have you know that David Beckham and Brad Pitt have both come out as AFOLs so I'm in prestigious company,
actually
…').
The Lego Movie
broke box office records in 2014 and its message of creativity, teamwork and the ‘power of play' made such a splash that it garnered more column inches than any children's film to date and even attracted accusations of anti-capitalist propaganda. ‘Trotskyite' Lego execs were delighted with the extra ticket and toy sales this free PR engendered, and a few younger minds were inspired to try living a little more Danishly.

After lunch (rye bread, salad and pork, as promised, with not a whiff of sucrose), I wangle myself a tour of the factory to see what all the fuss is about and am joined by some tourists from Japan who've flown in especially for the honour. I see where the minifigures are made, from their yellow smiling faces to their u-shaped hands and clip-on helmet hair. A couple of misprints are brutally discarded, with only the most pristine toys allowed to pass through to the boxing area to be packed by elves … I mean ‘workers'.

Lego isn't the cheapest toy on the shelves, but quality is prized above all else. The founder, Ole Kirk Christiansen, once scolded his son, Godtfred, for announcing proudly that he'd managed to save money on paint by applying a thinner coat to each toy. Ole instructed him to recall the whole consignment and repaint each one, saying, ‘only the best is good enough' – a phrase since adopted as the Lego motto.

Today, the company is estimated to be worth $14.6 billion (or £8.6 billion) and is the biggest toymaker in the world. There are 560 billion Lego pieces in existence, or 86 for each person on the planet (though having never been much of a Lego fan growing up, I can't help wondering who's got mine…). Lego produces 400 million tyres a year for its vehicles, making it officially the biggest tyre manufacturer in the world. Oh, and seven Lego sets are sold
every second
. There goes another one. And another. And another.

Ole Kirk Christiansen's grandson, Kjeld, now owns the company, making him the richest man in Denmark. But he eschews tropical tax havens or the bright lights of Copenhagen and chooses to live in Billund, the tiny town where it all started. Lego HQ is still based in the Jutland backwater and high-flying folk from all over the world are encouraged to meet with the toymaker in the rear end of
actual
nowhere. The Kirk Christiansens haven't just made Billund their home, they've paid for the town to have its own airport (the second biggest in Denmark, in a town of just over 6,000 people) a church, a community centre, a school, a youth club and a library. There's a lot of love in Jutland for Lego's Kjeld, who mysteriously changed the spelling of his surname to Kirk
K
ristiansen with a ‘K' and is now referred to affectionately (if ill-advisedly) as ‘KKK'.

It's safe to say that Lego Man is pretty pleased with his new job. Which is good, as otherwise we'd have uprooted our lives for nothing. No pressure… I ask what he enjoys most and he says that, aside from the food, the singing and the staff discount at the Lego Shop, the best thing is that the work is actually interesting. ‘A lot of people say that out here, people don't bitch about work like they do at home. They don't choose a profession based on how much they're going to earn. They choose it based on what interests them. Education is free so anyone can train in whatever they want. You know you're going to get taxed a lot anyway, so you may as well just focus on doing what you love, rather than what's going to land you a massive salary.'

‘So there's less incentive to sacrifice career fulfilment for the almighty dollar?' I ask.

‘Precisely – because the more you earn, the more tax you pay.'

He tells me about a word he's been taught that encapsulates the Danish attitude to work: ‘
arbejdsglæde
' – from ‘
arbejde
' the Danish for ‘work' and ‘
glæde
' from the word for ‘happiness'. It literally means ‘happiness at work'; something that's crucial to living the good life for Scandinavians. The word exists exclusively in Nordic languages, and hasn't been found anywhere else in the world. By contrast, the tourists I meet on my factory tour tell me that the Japanese have their own word that sums up their country's approach to work: ‘
karoshi
', meaning ‘death from overwork'. There's no danger of that in Denmark.

Later that day, Lego Man and I are comparing diaries for the week ahead when he tells me he'll be away for two days. ‘It's a team retreat. We've got to take loose-fitting clothes and an open mind, apparently, to “explore engagement through yoga”.'

‘Sorry?' I splutter. Lego Man has never saluted the sun in his life.

‘That's what the email says…' he points at his computer screen, slightly defensive now.

‘What does “engagement through yoga” even mean?'

‘I don't know,' he shrugs, ‘but it looks like you won't be the only one working in their PJs next week.'

Lego Man's work-life balance seems to be in pretty good shape. But then, a family-owned toy company in the business of making kids happy and developing creativity was never going to be the most cut-throat of environments. I can't help wondering whether Lego Man's experience is unique. Could there really be something similar happening in all Danish workplaces? I decide to branch out and investigate other fields of working Danishly.

I do some digging and discover that public sector workers don't do too badly, either. America's ABC News anchor Bill Weir brought Denmark's binmen to international fame a few years ago when he took a trip to Copenhagen and met Jan Dion. Jan told Bill how he loved collecting rubbish for a living because he worked just five hours a day and could then spend the rest of his time at home with his family or coaching handball at his children's school (53 per cent of Danes do some kind of voluntary work, a Ministry of Culture poll found – something else that makes them happier, according to recent research from the University of Exeter). Jan told the world how no one in Denmark judged him on his career, and how he felt happy every day because he met friends along his route and old ladies would bring him cups of coffee. Inspired, I attempt to strike up conversation with my own refuse collector but he's a) in a hurry, b) not great at English and c) not keen on coffee (possibly the only Dane in the country who isn't). He lets me know this by making an ‘
eurgh, yuck
' face when I show him a cafetière and offer to make him a cup. There's to be no bonding over caffeinated beverages for us. But he is smiling and we establish, through a complicated series of hand gestures, that he likes his job.

‘Happy?' I ask, wrapped up in a totally impractical cerise cocoon coat on my doorstep, trying to keep the dog from making a break for freedom into the snowy wilds of Sticksville-on-Sea. My refuse man looks at me quite rightly as though I am a lunatic, then nods and tries to make his escape.

‘Happy? Out of ten?' I hold fingers up.

At this point, the postwoman arrives on her scooter and offers to translate. Feeling more than a little foolish, I explain that I'm trying to ask my refuse collector how happy he is out of ten.

‘Ok-ay…' she also looks at me as though I'm deranged, then says something very fast to the bin man. They look at each other for a few seconds, then do the Danish equivalent of the winding-your-finger-around-one-side-of-your-head to denote that you think someone's mental.

‘Otte?' Bin Man finally replies.

‘Eight!' I yelp, before the postwoman has a chance to translate. ‘That means eight, right?' I look to her for approval and feel pleased that I am now capable of counting to ten (or rather, eight) in Danish. Postwoman nods, pulls another ‘this woman is batshit crazy' face, and then zooms off on her bike.

Buoyed up by my ‘research', I start seeing evidence all around me. I meet a yoga teacher for a feature in Aarhus, our nearest Big City, and canvas her opinion. Ida is a fresh-faced, healthy, tanned, toned Viking.
If this is what yoga does to you then I want in
, I think. I tell her about my happiness project and she says she thinks Danes do have a good work-life balance on the whole. ‘And if we don't, we usually do something about it. You ask yourself, “are you happy where you are?” If the answer's “yes” then you stay. If it's “no”, you leave. We recognise that how you choose to spend the majority of your time is important. For me, it's the simple life – spending more time in nature and with family. If you work too hard, you get stressed, then you get sick, and then you can't work at all.' She tells me that she used to work as a political spin doctor in Copenhagen until she found she was getting so stressed that her hair started falling out. ‘I had big chunks missing, I felt tired all the time, and then I fell off my bike quite badly one day on top of it all and thought, “this is crazy, I need to make changes”.'

Ida quit her job the very next week and began training as a yoga teacher. Because the welfare state offers a safety net, Danes can change career relatively easily. After a five-week ‘quarantine period' following a resignation, you're entitled to all the same benefits as someone who's been made redundant – 80–90 per cent of your salary for up to two years. The Danish labour market has a ‘flexicurity' model – a flexible yet secure labour market that means it's easier to make someone redundant, but that workers are protected and looked after until they find something else they like, and it's all financed by tax revenue. According to statistics, 25 per cent of the Danish workforce gets a new job every year and 40 per cent of unemployed workers find new jobs within the first three months. Denmark also spends more on lifelong training than any other country in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's group of 34 developed countries (the OECD), with the government, unions, and companies paying employees to attend training and pick up new skills. This helps workers stay up to speed in a changing job market. And since moving jobs has no effect on pension entitlements or earned holiday time, there are no barriers to changing employer in Denmark. You can hop around and still accrue the same benefits and number of days off. The system seems to be working, with the current unemployment rate at just 5 per cent. With around two-thirds of Danes belonging to a trade union, there's also muscle on hand to fight for the preservation of workers' rights and privileges should anything go wrong – so it's very much power to the people.

‘It means that in Denmark, we all have a choice,' says Ida. Now she works how she wants and when she wants to in a candlelit haven of a yoga studio. ‘I'd say I'm an eight out of ten in terms of happiness these days. It would be a ten but I still haven't met the love of my life – though I'm hopeful! Right now, I'm so grateful for the changes I've made. I feel like I'm really
living
.' She makes it all sound so simple. Not easy, but simple: life wasn't feeling right so she made changes and now, things are good. I'm not sure I've ever made any major decisions without a hefty kick up the arse. But then, I've never lived Danishly before.

I start to wonder whether Danes are just braver, or more confident in their own decisions. Martin Bjergegaard thinks so. A businessman and entrepreneur, Martin is Denmark's poster boy for happy working practices since his book,
Winning Without Losing
, was published in 2013. He had a stressful spell working for an American company for fifteen months until, he says, he couldn't sleep any more. ‘I don't know if you've ever tried not sleeping, but when you do it for too long, things go downhill pretty fast. By the end of night number three wide awake, I just thought, “I need to make a change”. I had to stop being in a work environment that was making me unwell. The day I quit, I slept like a baby and I've felt amazing ever since.' Martin is also a runner, travel fanatic and father to seven-year-old Mynte. Tall, tanned and youthful-looking for his 38 years, Martin insists that each day should be ‘fantastic' and ensures that he always spends a part of it recharging his batteries, playing sports and having fun. Oh, and he rates his own happiness out of ten at ‘a pure ten'.

‘Denmark is really at the forefront of this movement towards more happiness at work,' Martin tells me, once he's woken from his power nap one drizzly Wednesday afternoon. ‘I think this is down to equality and our great security system. It's really hard to be happy if you feel insecure, but Danes know that even if they lose their jobs, they're not going to end up on the streets. They'll be looked after. And this means they work more efficiently and are less stressed and happier in their jobs. In the US, no one has any support. Everyone is on their own. And yes, they have the chance to make it big without such high taxes, but they also have to look after themselves. If anything happens and you don't have insurance, then you're…' he searches for the right word and finds it. ‘…you're
fucked
. But in Denmark, we have this “work-life balance” thing pretty well sorted.'

The symbiosis between work and play in Denmark appears to have come about by accident. After the Second World War, industry overtook agriculture as the primary employer and growing cities needed more workers. The government advertised overseas for workers to join the Danish labour market and for the first time, women from all backgrounds were given a shot at the nine-to-five (or ‘eight-to-four' in Denmark). The Danish workforce increased by a million between 1960 and 1990 – and women accounted for 850,000 of these, I find out from Denmark's Centre for Gender, Equality and Ethnicity, KVINFO. During this period, it became acceptable for married, middle-class women to work, whereas previously only the unmarried or hard-up had taken paid employment. With women in the workplace, parenting solutions became a priority. Working hours, childcare and maternity leave were standardised and the idea of balancing work and leisure time became entrenched. Now, it's just something that Danes have come to expect. People leave early on a Friday because they want to spend time with their family. Parents get a day off work, fully paid, to stay at home with their children if they get sick. As a result of these practices, Denmark comes top of the pile for work-life balance according to the OECD, closely followed by the Netherlands, Norway and Belgium. The UK and the USA limp in at 22nd and 28th place respectively.