The plight of the returning Dane

Foreigners living in a new country seem to attract one another – every time I’ve lived in a foreign country I seemed to befriend other foreigners first, before meeting and befriending some of the locals. Be it through communities and associations for foreign professionals, co-workers in international companies with foreign employees, friends of friends from one’s home country or simply a chance encounter that promises the joy of commiseration.

Denmark was no different for me – following my arrival in Denmark I quickly met other expats and foreigners through my Danish language school, my job searching activities and my networking efforts across various expat associations. But this time around I found another group yearning for an opportunity to share frustrations and exchange criticism of the host country: Danes who have lived abroad for a few years and returned to Denmark.

Otherwise known as ‘repatriates’ (as opposed to ‘expatriates’), people who live outside their home country for many years and then return to it often experience a sort of a ‘reverse culture shock’. And according to conventional wisdom they tend to find this reverse culture shock more surprising and difficult to deal with than the original culture shock when moving abroad. I can personally attest to that, having a severe case of reverse culture shock at home – my partner.

So what do Danish repatriates talk about when sharing their frustrations over Denmark? One Dane I met, who spent a few years in the US, said “the first thing I noticed after I came back was how poor customer service is in Denmark, and how unfriendly people are here”. Another friend who spent a few years in London and Barcelona, confessed as follows: “soon after moving I realized that Denmark isn’t as open – and Danes aren’t as open-minded – as I once thought. When I moved back here this realization hit me even harder”.

Several returning Danes I’ve met said something like “I have always been taught to believe that everything in Denmark is superior to the rest of the world. Now I know that’s completely untrue”; others complained that the Danish health care system is far inferior to those of other countries they’ve lived in; many laughed about the myth of ‘superb infrastructure’ which in their minds proved to be just that – a myth; one friend slammed the entire Danish education system when she said: “this mentality of mediocrity and discouragement of drive, ambition and competition has so many negative aspects, but nobody ever talks about it!”; and others claimed that the social welfare system no longer provides value for tax money, and robs them of the personal freedom and choice they’ve grown accustomed to abroad.

I guess it’s natural for people who left their home country, discovered the world and then moved back, to think that their homeland is provincial, narrow-minded and mono-cultural. But the Danish phenomenon of reverse culture shock seems stronger and more widespread than anything I’ve encountered as a foreigner living in the US and the UK. I can’t help wondering why that is.

Perhaps it’s the fact that Danes cannot find the freedom (associated with anonymity and foreignness), which they’ve grown to like in other countries, back in the small and culturally homogeneous city of Copenhagen (as opposed to Americans returning to New York and Brits returning to London – two huge multicultural cities where even locals can feel free and anonymous). Or perhaps it has something to do with the Danish tradition of ‘nurturing a collective self esteem’, or in other words – the patriotic indoctrination most countries practice, but which Denmark seems especially good at. I was once told this is a result of the loss of territory and power in the 19^th century, requiring the building of a new type of national pride not linked to international political might. Whatever the reason, it worked brilliantly!

This might be the reason behind the conviction held by many Danes that Denmark is in fact a perfect society. I can see then why when Danes move abroad and find their home country is not perfect (as all people do when living abroad), they struggle more than others (something I can personally identify with coming from a country that’s exceptionally good in the art of nurturing a collective self esteem, which I tend to call good old nationalism).

I can keep speculating about the real causes of the plight of Danish repatriates, but a more important point is that every country in pursuit of continuous improvement can benefit greatly from its nation’s repatriates, who bring a different perspective and often a strong will to change things for the better. I’ve met many of those in my last few months in Denmark; now the question is whether their insights can be utilized for the benefit of the country.