“Dear ———-,
We hate it here. But the thing is, you get sucked in. We only meant to stay for a few years and it seemed like a good idea at the time.
From the outside Denmark just looked like the dreams we’d have of Scandinavia, we had ancestors from Denmark and in some sense we wanted to walk in their footsteps.
We had always been so proud of our Danish connections, and holidays here were fun if a little quiet and expensive.
When the time came for a relocation, choosing to move to Denmark seemed like the right thing to do. From the outside, and with our family history here and our experiences holidaying, Denmark looked like a place of safety where our children could grow. We were looking forward to taking advantage of the benefits of a time in Denmark.
Well, we got here, and for the first couple of years we sent postcards and letters praising Denmark. We coaxed loved ones out here but they rarely wanted to return a second time. We know now that they loved us but basically couldn’t afford holidays here. There was also the problem of what to do. Once we’d shown them the little mermaid, a few windmills and had a brunch for thirty dollars the options rapidly ran out. Tivoli was great but again, fielding shocked questions about the prices everywhere began to be a little embarrassing. We began to warn visitors of the cost of things here, it was offputting.
Our friends and family kept pretty quiet, and we now know that they felt we were being a little unrealistic but were trying to suspend disbelief. Hearing about the glory of the Danish system prompted them to do some investigations of their own, it turns out, they knew before us that the stats showed Denmark wasn’t doing all that great, it just wanted to think it was.
So the years rolled by and the shine went on our Wonderful Danish Dream.
One by one every lofty reason we came here toppled and crumbled into dust.
There is much talk of Denmark being family orientated, but all parents are working from their childrens baby years and it is rare to find a parent who chooses to be a homebody. Women who stay at home here tend to be mentally unwell or with some other ‘excuse’ to not work. The work ethic is so strong parents feel that it is wrong to stay home for the kids.
What used to be a real bonus uniquely to the Danish way of life, the fact that required education did not begin until first grade, changed last year when the government added one more year of compulsory education and children went to school one year earlier. No body kicked up a fuss because all the children are packed away from a really early age anyway. That is another thing that worries us: the complacency of the Danish, the way they are so orderly and sheep like. And their loose attitudes to some issues (nudity and sexual explicit material in public) and their way of being extremely tight about others, like their clampdown on other cultures living here.
The stress of being a family here and working is so huge. It is not uncommon for parents to put their smallest kids in daycare as early as 7am to be picked up late, as late as 4-5pm. The school holidays are often not recognized, with kids in daycare through half of the summer or more.
We wanted to enjoy a slower pace of life here, with less emphasis on keeping up with the neighbors, but we have been steadily disgusted by the material trappings of life in Denmark. Everything we believed to be great about Denmark turned out to be a myth.
The Danes drink so much. We used to like a drink before we came here, but we have kind of reached saturation point. We worry about our kids growing up in such a weird inbred culture. We want our kids to grow up in a culture with more breadth and diversity. The idiots in power here are a great concern but we have to consider the people who are voting them in.
The Danes are so hard to love. They have their own funny little ways, we have to learn to appreciate the differences, but it is hard to feel close to them, they seem to blow hot and cold. It’s a ‘them’ and ‘us’ situation.
Well, to cut a long story short, and to avoid long distressed paragraphs about how we feel about life here, the truth is, we would like to leave, we wanted to leave ages ago.
I think the problem is that we feel in leaving, a sense of defeat. We really did expect to love it here, we couldn’t see the problems we have encountered and we are disappointed that the place calling itself the happiest on the planet is full of miserable and dare-I-say-it mind crushingly boring people and little or no resources or treasures.
We dislike not liking our neighbours, they are so blunt and basic, we dislike finding the language ugly to speak or hear, we dislike our standards slipping and the feeling of just giving up and giving in. We are positive people who love life and the richness of life and find life here increasingly uninteresting. We light up when we are with foreigners, and we feel we must dumb down when we are with the Danes, or else pretend to be integrated when we are not.
Leaving Denmark is going to be a real struggle, because we will also have to admit that we have failed here. And the hardest part is that we will go away with nothing at all honestly positive to say about the place and if we ever hear of anyone thinking of moving here we will give them a good talking to.
The other aspect of this defeat is that the popular Danish attitude is to reject foreigners. The politicians voted into power by the Danish People are broadcasting their intention to make Denmark unattractive to foreigners, and even those foreigners that to get to slip in are pretty much forced to give up their cultural heritage and the only way to really be here is to be as Danish as possible.
Well, we can’t ‘be’ Danish. Our kids are begging us to get them out of here citing the feeling that they have no future here and that they want to be somewhere else. Even though they have been fully immersed in Danish culture during most of our years here, they have always gravitated towards the children who are not from Denmark. Whatever social pool they have swum in they have always sought out the company of the excellent or the ostracized.
We have met lots of Danes we are fond of, but notice that they can only go so far, they have severe limits, and it’s like many of them are living their whole lives with the thought of their pension in mind, and many of them are just playing the system. It’s difficult to make friends with Danes because they are Danish first, and everything else second.
We tried to find the Danes who were a little unusual, but there is this cut off point, if they are under pressure or extra is being demanded of them, they always revert to type. Even the freakiest Danes are basically flying the flag at every family celebration. And we are so tired of those occasions, the ones where people are toasting and singing and stuffing the food in and it is all so woefully predictable and obvious and they just do it and do it and do it over and over again and for some reason, it doesn’t get to them. They are all perfectly happy and smug with the Danish way of doing things and perhaps that is why they cannot admit any other way is possible.
So there I go again. And this is the point. Defeat or no defeat, leaving Denmark is our only option, but we have this sense of being weakened by our time here. So long in such a closed society has given us a sort of lobotomy, we wonder at our recovery, how long will it take us to be able to navigate a more diverse world?
And what of the nightmares of our time here? All those awful nationalists here and what they say and what they do? Endless group social events with the same routine, those songs, that awful food? The smugness of the locals, the intolerance? All those years trying to fit in and only finding no place to fit?
We want to go, we do. We are too bright and creative for this system, this culture. We have to get over the fact that we are letting the worst of the Danish win by leaving because it is awful to be here. We have to get over the fact that everything we learned here in our efforts to integrate is now to be discarded. We have to let go of the wasted years learning a language that sits uncomfortably on the tongue and in the brain.
We have stayed longer than we should, but we are not quitters, and we wanted to be sure. We investigated every single path of life here, mixed with all sorts of groups, and now we find that the only people who really understand us are those who have lived here long enough to know the troubles. We don’t have any time for people who just want to talk about how great it is here because we are past that now.
It has been an adventure but in all fairness, we gave far more to Denmark than it ever gave to us, but we would like to balance that out in our minds.
All we can do now, as we approach our inevitable departure, is to appreciate the people we HAVE found here (them being almost exclusively foreign and not interested in being integrated) and to take snapshots of areas here we have had happy family memories in order to try and assemble some kind of memory book for the children. We want them to have learned a lot here and our discussions have lead us to believe they have learned about xenophobia and boredom more than anything.
All of our happy times here (of which there have been many) have been somehow cut off from what is going on in the mainstream or even alternative Danish worlds. But there have been happy times here, and we will keep our memories protected.
We have to come to terms with the way Denmark is, we have to come to terms with it, accept that it is not going to change and that the best thing we can do for ourselves and our children is to move on and leave Denmark and the Danish to it’s fate. We need to get over the sense of shock and disgust, at ourselves mostly for staying too long and for believing the hype about Denmark.
One of the reasons we have been able to stay so long is our network of foreign friends here, there is a great sense of camaraderie and understanding amongst those who know the troubles here, we boost each other up and we support each other and it all starts with the admittance: this place sucks but we are still okay.
Leaving Denmark would also mean leaving our network here, but since the average turnover is quite high anyway, and we are very used to saying goodbye to others who just have to go in the end, we should probably just get on with it.
I am interested in hearing more from the people who left Denmark in the end and out of a feeling of just having to get the h*** out of here, but I can’t find many people who are documenting that transition. It seems that when people do leave here, they don’t want to look back.
Thankyou for everything, it helps to know that others are in understanding of how difficult it is here. “
To readers, any of this sound like something you could write?
