The Year of Living Danishly (8 page)

The official working week in Denmark is 37 hours, already one of the shortest in Europe. But calculations from Statistic Denmark suggest that Danes actually work an average of just 34 hours a week. Employees are entitled to five weeks' paid holiday a year, as well as thirteen days off for public holidays. This means that Danes actually only work an average of 18.5 days a month. This blows some newcomers' minds so much that a few American expats on secondment insist on working from 8am to 6pm every day so it's not too much of a shock when they go home.

Danes may spend ridiculously few hours in their place of work, but they're enjoying the time that they do put in. A study by Ramboll Management and Analyse Denmark showed that 57 per cent would carry on working even if they won the lottery and could afford not to work for the rest of their lives, and research from Denmark's Aalborg University showed that 70 per cent of Danes ‘agreed or strongly agreed' with the statement that they would prefer paid employment even if they didn't need the money. Danish workers are the most satisfied in the EU, according to a recent European Commission survey, and Denmark also comes top in terms of worker motivation, according to The World Competitiveness Yearbook. The latest Eurobarometer survey found that Denmark has the happiest workforce in the EU and another study from
Randstand.com
showed Danish employees to be the happiest
in the world
. Oh, and workers are 12 per cent more productive when they're in a positive state of mind, according to research from the University of Warwick. In fact, Denmark ranked third in the OECD's study into worker productivity. They may not be working long hours, but they're getting the job done. The country also came ninth on the UN's global innovation barometer and the World Bank named Denmark as the easiest place in Europe to do business. It's lucky Danes don't like to brag.

But it's not all
smørrebrød
and sing-songs in the Nordic workplace. Despite all the obvious advantages to being an employee in Denmark, workplace stress – as Ida discovered – is becoming more common.

The Department of Occupational Medicine at Herning University Hospital ran a study suggesting that one in ten Danish employees considered themselves to be frequently stressed. Their findings were supported by research from the Danish National Institute of Social Research, the National Institute of Public Health and the National Research Centre for the Working Environment. But individual trade unions report more alarming results, with the Confederation of Salaried Employees and Civil Servants in Denmark, the Danish Association of Lawyers and Economists and the Financial Services Union putting the proportion of their members suffering from stress at 30 per cent.

I'm surprised to learn that the country with the best work-life balance in the world also has a stress problem. But just as there are no definitive statistics on how many Danes are signed off with stress, there's little consensus about
why
workers are suffering. Danish workplace happiness expert Alexander Kjerulf of
woohooinc.com
believes that the increased prevalence of smartphones, laptops and remote working may be to blame.

‘It's becoming more common to have to check messages in the evenings,' says Alexander, ‘which isn't good, as you never relax and recharge.' This is backed up by some unions, with the Danish Association of Lawyers and Economists even reporting that 50 per cent of its members work when they're supposed to be off on holiday.

The landscape of big business in Denmark has also changed. Over the past two decades, there's been a 500 per cent increase in highly skilled foreign workers arriving in Denmark, according to the Danish Immigration Service. Because so-called ‘educated immigrants' pay high taxes and arrive in the peak of their working life and health, they place little burden on the welfare state and contribute handsomely to the country's coffers. This increases the feeling of competition in the workplace for native Danes – something that can send stress levels soaring, according to some of the Danes I speak to. It feels strange to be on the receiving end of a ‘bloody foreigners, coming over here, stealing our jobs' cliché, but in this instance I can't deny that we have. And it's making many native Danes anxious.

Danes also have high expectations of working life. ‘We know our jobs are secure and that there's a safety net,' one woman who works in middle management for a major Danish company tells me on the sly, ‘so if I'm not happy at work, I think, “what's my boss going to do about it?” We realise we have it pretty good, compared to the rest of Europe. But if we're not having it
great
? Well, then we think something's wrong. I know several people who've been signed off for stress because of this.' In keeping with the idea of
arbejdsglæde
, most Danes want to enjoy themselves at work. To many, a job isn't just a way to get paid; they expect far more. And this can make them demanding employees. At Lego, a spy tells me, there was a recent mutiny when the toymaker changed their coffee supplier.

‘The internal message boards went nuts,' my secret agent says. ‘The guy who makes the coffee decisions got trolled. People went mad! There's a culture of entitlement because we've had it so good for so long now. If we don't get everything we hope for from work, people can get depressed – or at least think they're depressed.'

Another theory is that because stress has been on the agenda in recent years, Danes get asked about it more often and so are inclined to think, ‘actually yes, I am stressed'. Researchers from Denmark's National Research Centre for the Working Environment recently expressed concern that the preoccupation with stress might be leading survey respondents to report being stressed even though they weren't, with some Danes going on stress leave as a ‘preventative' measure.

Workplace happiness tsar Alexander has another hypothesis: ‘I don't think there's really more stress in Denmark than in other countries, it's just we take care of people better here,' he says. Local municipalities can fund absences of up to a year before suggesting reduced working hours and offering job counselling for Danes diagnosed with stress. ‘Whereas in the US or the UK you'd be expected to soldier on, in Denmark your employer and your doctor will listen if you say you're stressed – and they'll do what they can to help.'

‘So, are you saying Danes are
a bit soft
?' I suggest.

‘We're
caring
,' Alexander corrects me. ‘We get people well again, and then they're really productive.'

This is beginning to sound plausible. Denmark is still coming top of the list for happiness, worker motivation, work-life balance
and
productivity. OK, so things aren't perfect, but I'm pretty sure there are still lessons to be learnt from work-life balance, Danish-style.

After another hard day at the coalface of happiness research, I pour myself a medicinal glass of wine at 6pm and think about whether there's a way I can apply the principles of Danish work-life balance to my own laptop-tied existence. I've given up a good position to come here and freelance – something most Jutlanders can't get their head around, with numerous people asking me when I plan to get a ‘proper job'. Instead of being known by my name here, I am referred to as ‘Lego Man's wife'. My work feels like the only thing that still defines me as ‘me', rather than as a small yellow minifigure with a click-on ponytail. My work has always been my identity. So the idea of doing
less of it
is terrifying.

I get the whole money-can't-buy-you-happiness thing. Having chosen a career as a journalist, I know all about picking a career that sounds interesting but will in no way bring you wealth/yachts/a champagne lifestyle (unless it's on a press trip). I understand that success and happiness should be measured by something other than money. That you can work and work to build up your bank balance and then end up spending it all to outsource your life, buying back your sanity and bribing yourself to keep on going. Over a certain basic threshold, it's simple life maths:
Fewer new shiny things = fewer hours overtime = happier life.

So why do I find it so hard to say no to work? Even when I'm too busy to eat/breathe/wee? I was like this when I was a staffer too, but now it's worse. The curse of the freelancer is never knowing where your next pay cheque is coming from or when they might stop – so it seems foolish to take my foot off the pedal and stop working evenings, weekends, and those bleak, lonely hours in the middle of the night when you wake up stressed and steeled to tackle a deadline. But then, that's part of the reason we're here. Doctors in the UK warned us that an out-of-whack work-life balance was probably one of the reasons I haven't been able to get pregnant. Having spent the last two years bloated on hormones and acting as a virtual pincushion for various different types of fertility treatment, I'd promised to try and relax a little more out here. To take a break from worrying about baby-making and from working quite so hard, if I can.

‘
If you work too hard, you get stressed, then you get sick, and then you can't work at all
,' Viking goddess Ida's words come back to me as I take another slug of wine (did I mention the ‘on a break' part? No judging). By glass number two, I'm feeling bullish. Fuelled by bravado and Beaujolais, I move the cursor of my laptop to the silhouetted apple symbol on the top left-hand corner of the screen.
I'm going Danish
, I think.
No more being a slave to my inbox all night
. It's 6.25pm Danish time. That's only 5.25pm UK time. A whole 35 minutes before the commissioning editors in the offices of the newspapers and magazines I write for will even think about logging off. A whole 2,100 seconds of email communication or last-minute additions or deadlines or commissions I might miss until morning. And that's assuming that the London folk are clocking off on time. Which is unlikely. Feeling a rush of something resembling adrenaline mixed with bile, I hover the cursor over ‘
Shut Down
' and click. There is silence. The whirring sound I'd assumed was just part of the general hum of my new, all-mod-cons Scandi house, dies down. LED lights dim to nothingness. And the world does not end.

Nobody calls me on my mobile to shout at me for not answering an urgent email. Nobody lets off a flare gun from London that can be seen all the way over in Jutland to alert me to the fact that my services are required. No bat-light goes on over the North Sea to summon my expertise. I have a startling realisation that I am not nearly as indispensable as I think I am. My natural reaction is to panic that my career must therefore be in tatters and assume that I'll never work again. But then I try breathing. And not being a massive idiot. And this, it transpires, is a far more effective strategy.

I have ‘an evening', despite putting in two more hours of work than the average Dane. I walk the dog in the forest and feel as though I'm in
The Killing
, about to discover a shallow grave at any moment. I watch TV. I
talk
to my husband. Life goes on. And in the morning? Other than the glut of emails offering to enhance my manhood and a few PR memos, my inbox is empty. Lesson two of living Danishly, learned.

Things I've learned this month:

1. Someone out there has my share of Lego bricks
   
2. Jante's Law can be strangely liberating
   
3. If I'm going to be stressed anywhere, Denmark's the place to be
   
4. I am not important. If I take a break, no one dies. And this is A Good Thing.
   

3. March

Leisure & Languages

Now that Lego Man and I have all this free time, we need to work out how to fill it. At home, this wouldn't have been a problem. At home, we had a social life, as well as an extended circle of friends and family we kept meaning to see but didn't have the time because we were always so busy. Now we have the time, just not the friends or family. We go back to the UK for a weekend and see lots of people all in one go. It feels a little like we're celebrity guests making a cameo appearance – for one night only in a gastropub near you. But then we come back to Sticksville and realise that we have to start over again. Some friends from home make plans to visit. Some send care parcels of Cadbury's Creme Eggs and British magazines. I am immensely grateful to them all. But we've got another nine months of living Danishly to go, and we can't keep going home every other weekend to carry on a social life across the North Sea. If we want to make this work, we're going to have to get out there, make some
actual
Danish friends and find things to do. This is somewhat scary.

‘So, what happens now?' Lego Man asks. It's a Thursday evening and he's restless. I can tell he's restless because he's just emptied the dishwasher, unprompted, and is now moving his expensive Danish designer candlestick from one end of the dining room table to the other and back again to assess where it looks best.

‘What do you mean “what happens now”?' I look up from a book, holding my finger at end of the sentence I've just read so that I don't lose my place and hoping this interruption won't last long.

‘Well, we've cleaned the house. We've walked the dog. We've watched
The Bridge
, and it's only 7pm…'

‘So…?'

‘So, what do we do now?'

‘Oh, I see. Why don't you read something?' I nod vaguely in the direction of the bookcase.

‘Done that,' he says, tapping his head as though every book we own is now safely memorised within his skull.

‘Right…' I cast around for a bookmark.
This could take a while
.

Since getting our heads around this strange new ‘work-life balance' concept, Lego Man has been at a loss. He's like one of those National Lottery winners facing a lifetime of leisure and luxury who doesn't quite know what to do with it. As Danes work just 34 hours a week, we're left with an alarming 134 hours to fill. I'm happy to boxset/read/eat the extra time away for a little while longer, but Lego Man is not. Nor does he feel it's ‘healthy' for me to be stuck inside all the time.

‘Well?' Lego Man is waiting patiently. ‘What do you think
they
all do?'

‘
They
?'

‘The Danes. Of an evening, I mean?'

‘I don't know,' I say, getting up from the sofa and noticing that I have left a deep indentation. This suggests that I may have been there for some time.
Damn it, maybe Lego Man is right…
‘We could ask around, I suppose?' I say, reluctantly. I can tell that I'm about to be bullied into doing something other than lazing around reading books. ‘We could find out what normal people do, I suppose—'

‘—We
are
normal people!'

‘—
other
people,' I correct myself swiftly, ‘I mean
other
people.'

‘Right. Yes. Good plan. Let's both do that.'

And so the very next day I begin to investigate how the good people of our newly adopted homeland fill their free time each week and whether the pursuit of leisure can have an impact on happiness levels. I look up the leading authority on leisure in my new hood – Danish sociologist Bjarne Ibsen – to get a bit of background on leisure in Denmark and why it's such a big deal around these parts.

‘Danes, in common with all Scandinavians, love a club, an association, or a society of some description where they can pursue a hobby,' says Bjarne. ‘It all started with gymnastics.'

‘
Gymnastics
?' I hadn't expected this.

‘Yes, we have a long tradition of gymnastics in Denmark. It was considered good for the health of society after the modernisation of the farming class in the second half of the 19th century—'

I translate this into laywoman's terms: ‘So farmers were encouraged to do backflips and roly-polies and things?'

‘
I think they're called forward rolls
,' Lego Man mutters as he rifles through the detritus on the desk to find his glasses.

‘Sorry,
forward rolls
. So, why gymnastics?'

‘Well,' Bjarne goes on, ‘it's a form of exercise you can do inside as well as out, and you don't need any special equipment. It was more about calisthenics than competitive displays back then. “Sport for all” became a goal for Scandinavian societies post-war,' he tells me. This sounds wonderfully worthy. Studies show that moderate exercise has been proven to lower the risk of depression and boost long-term mental health. So could getting active and getting out there also be contributing to the Danes' happiness levels?

Bjarne thinks so. ‘It's definitely something that we recognise has a positive impact on people,' he says. ‘It started with sports clubs but now there are groups for all sorts of things.' The Danish government has a long tradition of supporting hobby societies, offering free premises and facilities as well as subsidies for under-25s who want to start an association or join one. The individual municipalities – the Danish equivalent of counties or states – will often provide facilities for free for those over 25 as well. There are approximately 80,000 associations in Denmark and around 90 per cent of Danes are members of societies, with the average Dane a member of 2.8 clubs. Bjarne tells me that they have a saying here: ‘When two Danes meet they form an association'. ‘We form associations for things we don't even
need
an association for. And because there's such a consensus culture and Danes don't like conflict, if there's the slightest disagreement, we'll often split into smaller clubs.'

‘Like leisure splinter groups?'

‘Exactly.' He tells me that in the town of Rønne in Bornholm, the small island off the coast of Zealand, they started up a roller-skating club but the organisers couldn't agree on one of the rules for the club. ‘So they split,' says Bjarne, ‘and now there are two roller-skating clubs in the town.'

‘And why are the Danes so keen on clubs?' I ask.

‘It fits in with the Scandinavian countries' ideas about unity, harmony and equality. The theory is that being a part of a club helps you to be an active person, involved in community life and with a sense of responsibility for the collective. This is important for developing a society of trust. There's lots of research to show that being part of a club helps develop trust as it encourages us to live a connected,
associational
life – which is good for us and makes us happy.' Clubs in Denmark also transcend any class barriers – as happiness economist Christian had told me before I set off on my quest, everyone is considered equal in a Danish club or society, so you'll find a CEO playing football with a cleaner.

Hobbies have long been proven to boost levels of well-being, and research from the Australian Happiness Institute found that having a pastime outside of work also improves quality of life, productivity and likelihood of career success. So clever Danes combine individual passions and pursuits with a feeling of community by doing them as part of a club or association. And having a sense of belonging and a ready-made social circle just makes Danes even happier. I ask Bjarne whether he counts himself among Denmark's happy hobbyists and he tells me that he does. His score? ‘Nine out of ten.'

Determined to get myself a slice of the happy action, I start by trying to find out what my options are, hobby-wise, in Sticksville. The Mr Beards haven't been seen since our altercation over the recycling bins but the woman who lives next door has taken to giving me a semi-friendly wave whenever we're out at the same time. She looks alarmingly like Sarah Lund from
The Killing
but so far I've only seen her in a caterpillar-like duvet coat so I'm yet to discover whether she also favours a Faroese jumper. Last week, I tentatively tried a ‘
Hej!
' (‘Hi' in Danish) and felt disproportionately jubilant when she responded in kind. We then had a cursory conversation – in English – about where we were both from and what on earth we were doing in Sticksville and I discovered that Friendly Neighbour was originally from The Big City of Aarhus in Jutland, that she was single, aged 40 and fond of designer chairs (along with every Dane, it seems). Today, I take things further.

‘So, er, what do people do around here in their spare time?' I start, sounding very much like I'm trying to pick her up. This is not my intention so I try another tack: ‘Are you a member of any, er,
clubs
?' I ask casually.

‘Oh yes,' she tells me. ‘I do t'ai chi, handball, hunting, then there's the normal fitness classes like interval training and Zumba, of course.'
Of course
. ‘And you? What do you do?'

‘
Weeeeeeell
,' I make the word last as long as possible to buy some time before admitting, ‘we haven't quite signed up for anything yet…'

‘Oh,' she looks at me as though I've just told her that I don't floss (I do, FYI). ‘So, what did you do in London?'

‘Erm…' I scroll back through the past decade. The only extracurricular activity that I can remember fitting in between an exhausting work schedule and an excessive social calendar for the past twelve years is a life-drawing class Lego Man and I signed up for in 2009. It was part of a hopelessly optimistic New Year's resolution to ‘better ourselves' but the results were below poor. The whole affair culminated in a Tony Hart-style gallery presentation where I made one of the older models cry because my portrait of her looked uncannily like Noel Edmonds. (Me: ‘Honestly, I don't know how it happened, I couldn't even draw Noel Edmonds if I tried! Look.' I tried. And failed. Surprisingly, this didn't help.) Lego Man developed a signature style of heavily etched pubic areas but wasn't so hot on faces or hands, which always ended up looking like garden trowels. We stopped attending after week five.

‘Well,' I tell my neighbour, ‘we both just worked a lot in London. I mean,
a lot
.'

‘Right. So have you signed up for Danish language classes yet?'

Damn! I knew there was something I should have been doing rather than curling up with Ian McEwan every night
.

We've had our official documentation through for weeks now and I still haven't enrolled for evening classes, kindly funded by the government for all immigrants for up to three years. (‘But I'm sure it won't take us that long!' Lego Man and I laugh when we're sent the automatic application form. Fools.)

‘It's on my to-do list. In fact, I'm phoning them this afternoon!' I shuffle off to inform Lego Man that we have our first leisure-time assignment. A University of Edinburgh study suggests that learning a second language has a positive effect on the brain and though there's no direct proof that it'll make us happier, it feels like something we should be doing to try to integrate and understand more of the secrets to living Danishly. So I sign us up, determined to give it a go.

The local municipal language centre runs evening courses twice a week, so on a cold, dark (surprise!) Tuesday, we bowl up for lesson one. It doesn't begin brilliantly.

‘
Hvor hedder du?
' A skinny woman with too-long hair barks at us.

‘Oh, hi! Sorry, we're here for the beginners' Danish class?'

‘
Hvor hedder du?!
' She's insistent now.

‘Sorry, we haven't started learning Danish yet, I just wanted to check – are we in the right room?'

‘
HVOR HEDDER DU?!
' the strange woman is now screaming at us.

‘I'm sorry,' I bleat feebly, ‘I don't know what that means … is it … Danish?'
Well done, genius.

The strange skinny woman now begins to shout some other phrases (‘
HVOR KOMMER DU FRA? HVOR ARBEJDER DU? HVOR GAMMEL DU? ER DU GIFT? HAR DU BØRN?
'). As a cool panic trickles down my collar, I'm transported back to tellings-off in the headmistress's office circa 1994.

Finally, a Ukrainian woman takes pity on us and explains that the teacher is asking our name, where we come from, where we work, how old we are, whether we are married and whether we've got any children.

A large part of me wants to shout back at the teacher, ‘it's none of your bloody business!' but instead I try being reasonable: ‘As I said, we haven't had any lessons yet, so I'm afraid we don't know what this means and how to answer in Danish…'

But Mrs Bad Teacher ignores me and instead turns around and begins writing choice phrases up on a white board in shouty red capitals.

‘I think she's screening us,' whispers the Ukrainian.

‘What?'

‘I think she's looking at our natural ability. To work out what level class we should all take.' The Ukrainian is clearly picking up a lot more of this that we are.

We end up in a class with a few Polish men, the kind Ukrainian woman, and half a dozen Filipino girls. Kind Ukrainian works in a ‘
fiskefabrik
' – something that sounds far more glamorous than it actually is (a fish-processing factory). The Poles all work as cleaners and handymen in hotels and the Filipinos work as au pairs. I can't help feeling surprised by this.

‘Isn't everyone supposed to be equal in Denmark? Aren't Danes supposed to do their own cleaning and child rearing?' I mutter to Lego Man during break time.

‘I thought so too,' he admits. But it turns out that the lure of Denmark's quality of life has as much appeal for our Polish and Ukrainian classmates as it had for us. Enough, in fact, to outweigh the upheaval of relocation, career changes and being far from friends and family. One of the Filipino girls tells us that she and her friends earn more in Denmark as au pairs than they did at home as a nurse, a physiotherapist and a psychiatrist respectively. It's interesting to be in a group with people we might never normally have met or spent time with and I find that being an immigrant is a humbling experience. I'm ashamed of the fact that my classmates all speak perfect English on top of their mother tongue and a smattering of other languages, when all we can do is ask where the nearest train station is in French. It turns out that attempting to learn a new language as a mid-thirties monoglot is no mean feat – and subtlety is everything.