“Dear Babs,
I had family connections with Denmark and as a kid I was always quite proud of the fact, I’d doodle the Danish flag on my school bag and brag about my ‘Viking Heritage’. At that point I hadn’t actually spent much time with the Danish except for some oldies who had moved from Denmark to the UK..and they were hardly Danish any more, except for the food, and the accent. They didn’t speak much about Denmark and had moved on.
It was always at the back of my mind, my bucket list if you like, that one day I would move to Denmark and experience that part of my heritage. I did this when I was a teenager and had a bit of a wake up experience. The Denmark I had imagined as a child was in fact Norway, or a cold California…I don’t know, but I can remember that the Denmark I found in the late 1980′s was a bit of a joke, boring beyond belief, desolate rigid and pedantic. But it was a sleepy kind of joke with everything running in an orderly way, and hell, I was mobile and could get the fuck out whenever I wanted. I left after a bit, moved back to the UK mainly, if I am honest, because I couldn’t find any blokes.
Seriously, any where else in the world, as a young woman, the men were throwing themselves at me, this sort of thing is important to a young girl. In Denmark there were about 80% blokes who looked like they were wearing comedy pig masks, 10% shiny billiard ball heads with overly clean fingernails and 10% mullet wearing heavy metal fans wearing too small trouser. They had all the charisma of something devoid of charisma, didn’t know how to banter or flirt and to be honest, not that there is anything wrong with it, but I just figured that there was a lot of homosexuality amongst the menfolk in Denmark because they sure as hell weren’t after the womens.
So I got bored and left. I did have a sense of proportion though. Just because Denmark wasn’t a sexual hotbed didn’t mean it wasn’t good for somethings..the parks were lovely and I had a feeling that it would be a decent place to bring up kids in their first ten years. I was however left with the impression that if one did the teen years in Denmark one would be irrevocably damaged by the boredom.
Fast forward a while and I returned to Denmark, a strange twist of fate meant that I had ‘fallen in love’ with a Dane (aka..he had a car and I needed help with some furniture lifting and it just snowballed from there). We set up house in Denmark, I did what so many foreign women have done, and married a Dane and got into integrating in to the culture.
I won’t bore you with the details. From reading your blog I can tell you have a lot of contact (as I do) with women who tried to live the Danish dream but found out it doesn’t translate if you are a)black b)brown c)a bit tan d) wearing a headscarf e)not into pigmeat f)modest g)sentient h) sober i)need intellectual stimulation j)have a sense of humor etc
So then. Fast forward again..OVER A DECADE…and after a long struggle I leave Denmark.
I just want to write and tell you what it is like to leave Denmark after years and years of trying to make Denmark a home without turning into some kind of Stepford Wife Evangelical Windmill Fan on a Mission.
I’d been on holidays out of Denmark in the time I was living there, and like so man others, I would come back from a place like Morocco and think: ”I felt at home in Morocco. I wish Denmark was a bit more like that. I loved it there, was so happy, wish I could be there….” and these feelings would last for a little bit until the daily routine in Denmark got me again,sucked me into this weird space that said it was okay to pay seven dollars for my morning coffee. That it was okay to pack my infants off to a load of leathery faced vingar titted daycare workers who stank of Prince ciggies and seemed to be JUDGING ME!!! There was this quiet desperation about life, but if I struggled, it just got worse and I began to have nightmares about global warming. The world is going to end if I leave Denmark! Denmark is the only safe place in the world! The only place with TRUE democracy and fairness for all!
It’s all lies of course. Denmark is a backwater two horse shag-your-15 year old cousin sort of place. It has two things on the shelves of the supermarket and they are both vacuum wrapped. There is NOTHING to do. NOTHING. But if one struggles it gets a lot worse. Boy does it get a lot worse.
In Denmark you have to go along with it or you will feel the rough edge of what Denmark can do to a person. Still, I don’t need to tell you that.
So I left. Eventually. It was really hard. The inlaws lined the streets wailing and wailing. Telling us that everywhere else in the world is unsafe and that in the event of the water level rising, Denmark was the best place to be. Etc.
All I can say is that leaving was like that bit in the Wizard of Oz..you know when it was all black and white before and suddenly it goes technicolor? The world moved on, Denmark stayed the same. Coming out of Denmark, meeting up with other people who have escaped the quicksand quality of the place, we all say we feel like people who have just done a long stretch in prison. I need the simplest things explained to me, about technology, about politics, about culture. Coming to the UK where culture and diversity is everywhere, I feel like a person who has got a reprieve.
They say you cannot generalise but you can about Denmark. They say a person who is tired of London is tired of life, and I say, a person who is satisfied in Denmark is a person who is too scared to live.
A PERSON WHO IS SATISFIED IN DENMARK IS A PERSON WHO IS TOO SCARED TO LIVE.
If you think I am wrong then just delve a bit deeper into peoples reasons for staying in Denmark. Fear based reasons will be uppermost.
So here I am, happy and technicolor after over a decade trying to be satisfied in Denmark. I wish I had left earlier but I am also amazed at my stamina for putting up with that joke of a place. I don’t know if I was a different person if I would have been able to put up with the lack of everything in Denmark, maybe my problem was that I had lead a very diverse life before coming to Denmark, my brain was all connected for fun and variance, maybe if I had come from Texas or from Jersey, or from some other dull place I would have been like “OOOH, wow, the windmills!!!” but it just didn’t work out that way.
All I can say is that I have a lot of catching up to do, the world is a wide and beautiful place, with beautiful people in it, but something about Denmark just sucks all that dry in people.
I can recommend leaving to anybody presently sucked into the myth of Denmark, but want to suggest that it takes a gargantuan effort to do so. To those who are newly in Denmark, who are getting those red flags up about the place, the trick is to LISTEN to them. You are wasting your life in a place that simply won’t give much back. As investments go, Denmark doesn’t return.
Lots of love
Ms ——–”
Dear Ms ——–,
Don’t worry about it. I left too. Which is why I do not have the time to update this blog. I do still get personal emails from women stuck in Denmark who want advice about getting out, and I can see most of the rebel bloggers have been bullied into shutting up about what it is really like in Denmark, but at the end of the day, there is only so much one person can do.
You are so right about life outside of Denmark being technicolor. I am really happy now I am away from that sick culture. Take some responsibility though, Denmark didn’t ask you to move there, and if you didn’t like it, it was right that you leave. Many expats rally against that idea, but it is right.
Denmark: if you find yourself not liking it, you really should leave.
Babs xxx
