I once met a funny Dane who told me “the Danes are the Latins of Scandinavia”. My first reaction was to laugh of course. Then last year I saw the new worldwide advertising campaign for Denmark with the (horrible, I think) slogan “free the Dane in you” next to a big heart-shaped Danish flag, and realized this Latin myth might be shared by more Danes than one. It’s common to think of the Danes as a tribe, but are they really a ‘Latin Nordic tribe’?
Well. You don’t exactly get a warm, Latin feeling in the streets of Copenhagen, not even in summertime. People tend to avoid locking eyes with others, and if it does accidentally happen, you can forget about seeing a smile. This is in sharp contrast to New York, where strangers would look, smile and even nod at you when they pass you by on the street. And if you happen to be somewhere stationary (a bus-stop, café, bar, park bench and pretty much anywhere else outside your home), you’re most likely to strike a conversation with the person standing or sitting next to you. And I love that! So why the cold, stand-offish attitude by the Danes?
Another area where Copenhagen fails on the ‘Latin’ scale is service. A little while ago I was sitting next to an Englishwoman on the bus, and both of us being the token Anglo-Saxons on the bus (if my British passport confers the right to use that title…) we immediately engaged in a lively discussion of Denmark and the Danes. “If you’re looking for work as a consultant, I’m sure you can do a lot in teaching Danish companies how to provide good customer service – they have a lot to learn!” she said. Sure enough, after spending a few days in Copenhagen I noticed that in many places I got a bit of a sour face, short attitude, and sometimes no eye contact at all, which in my book is pretty poor. So where are the big smiles, energetic body language, and warm personal interaction one associates with the Latin spirit? And is customer service and people’s behaviour in the streets of Copenhagen the right way to measure Latin-ness anyway?
As a branding specialist in London I often needed to capture the essence of a national character and incorporate it in the definition of clients’ brands. So I attempted to ‘define’ the essence of Norway, the Czech Republic and Lebanon for the branding of Norsk Hydro, Czech Airlines and Beirut (to mention a few). The purpose of this is not to boast about my capabilities (though let’s face it – don’t bloggers love having the opportunity to do that?), but to say that even though I’ve built a competence in identifying national traits, I find it hard to pin down the true Danish nature. It appears one has to dig deeper to detect whether Latin qualities exist in the Danish culture.
But tribal it most certainly is – the uniformity I see everywhere (from what people eat to how they dress, talk, behave, furnish their homes etc.), and the insularity of Danes (the first complaint I hear from every single foreigner I meet here, and something that really stands out against the background of my American and British adventures) – both of these justify the use of the word ‘tribe’. And having a good familiarity with Swedes and Norwegians, I would probably agree that the Danes are a bit more relaxed and blunt in their behaviour – ‘Latin’ qualities perhaps – though secretly I still think Scandinavia is really one big country with three different ‘regions’…
And the customer service problem? Well, perhaps it’s not so much being impolite, as most foreigners think, but rather being informal, which is another Danish quality. It’s a bit like how Brits always think Germans are impolite, but they just confuse their directness with rudeness. Myself, I always use English when interacting with service providers, and at some point invariably they get stuck on a word they’re not sure about – and then the giggles appear and the Latin spirit shows.
So the jury’s still out on whether a country as cold as Denmark can have anything Latin about it, but my experiences so far are mixed enough to warrant further examination.
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