A little while ago I was speaking to an American friend who wanted to visit us in our new host country following our move to Denmark last year. I said the usual refrain: “come in summertime, with Copenhagen at its most hospitable”, but was surprised to hear his response of “I think I prefer to come in the middle of winter – I’m thinking Northern Lights and all that”.
His comment got me thinking about how far reality is from most people’s perceptions of Denmark around the world. I should be more accurate and say that in fact most people around the world don’t have a perception of Denmark at all – to my friend’s credit at least he knew Denmark was a country, somewhere in the Nordics. After living 9 months here I still get the occasional friend abroad asking me how my Swedish is progressing, and whether I’m getting along with the Norwegians. Yes, it might be a surprise to many Danes, but most people around the world tend to refer to Scandinavian countries interchangeably, and Denmark often seems to be more easily forgettable in relation to its higher-profile neighbours. And there are still those who think that people in Denmark speak Dutch (as I wrote in my very first blog post about our friends’ reactions in London when we told them we had decided to move to Denmark), or that Denmark is the capital of Sweden or Holland.
Those however who do know that Denmark is a country (and even those who know that the residents of Denmark are Danes, and that they speak Danish) still seem to have fantastical ideas about it: from those thinking it’s an arctic Nordic country home to igloo dwellers and ice hotels, to others imagining a place where everything and everyone is stunningly beautiful, stylized and super-modern. Then there are those who think it’s a haven of nudity and promiscuity, or efficiency and austerity. Or all of the above. Perhaps the funniest contradicting perception of Denmark is that of a place where everyone is happy, yet many are depressed and commit suicide.
Of course some of these perceptions have a kernel of truth to them, but basically they’re all pretty far from reality in my opinion. So why is it that Denmark has such a low profile in the world compared to other Northern European countries like the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden? And why are perceptions of it seem to be so removed from reality?
To answer to the first question, it might be the fact that Denmark is smaller in population compared to countries like Sweden and the Netherlands, that it doesn’t have striking fjords (or oil) like Norway, that it never managed to attract as many tourists from countries outside the region as its neighbours did, and that it never had global consumer mega-brands associated with the country like the Swedish brands IKEA, Volvo and even ABBA (there are of course Lego and Carlsberg, but no-one seems to associate them with Denmark). Or maybe it has something to do with the fact that for many years there wasn’t an internationally known mainstream Danish figure in contemporary culture or sport (something that’s changing now with phenomena like Noma and Wozniacki).
As for the second question – perceptions of nations are often extreme and one-dimensional, but they might be even more removed from reality (and influenced by anecdotes) when the country in question is little known and seldom visited.
While undoubtedly a low profile can hurt a country’s economy by limiting export, investments and tourism – there’s something to be said for a country that is relatively obscure abroad. I find it quite entertaining when people I speak to don’t exactly know what Denmark is and where it’s located – almost like a quaint little place I can keep all to myself.
Then again I have to admit I too experienced a gap between my own perceptions and reality of Denmark when I moved here and realized that Copenhagen is much less international and cosmopolitan than I had previously imagined, despite having visited the country more than a dozen times in the past. Perhaps the flip side of being unknown to the world is that the world is a bit unknown to you. It might be a good idea to work on raising that profile after all…
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