What did the cats ever do to the Danes?

A move to a new country always entails moments of bewilderment and puzzlement. My move to Denmark was no exception. “I wonder why candy in Denmark is salty” I remember thinking on one of my first days here. And “why do people get so worked up about a sport virtually unknown to the rest of the world?” was another puzzling moment I experienced while witnessing my in-laws watching handball. Naturally there were many other questions and head-scratching moments – why is a right-wing government led by a party called ‘left’? and while we’re on the topic of politics, it’s a bit strange that the locals refer to their prime minister by his middle name… (yes, I realize it’s practical considering his predecessors, but it still sounds a bit funny). And what about that funny habit of answering the phone by stating your name – surely people know who they’re calling?! Or the fact that virtually all women’s names seem to end with an ‘e’.

Of course, with time one learns the origin of the local eccentricities, and if nothing else – one simply gets used to them. I no longer pause to contemplate the strangeness of seeing a woman wearing a fur coat riding a bicycle. And by now I’m pretty used to the locals imitating Swedish and Norwegian accents when they want to crack a joke. I still can’t get my head around the fact that people actually like paying taxes here, and I still can’t figure out why local bands insist on singing in English, but I guess some things take longer to work out.

Then a few weeks ago I joined the local Fastelavn celebrations with my partner and daughter, and was seriously puzzled once again. On a sunny day in a small and quiet residential neighbourhood, scores of parents and children gathered in what seemed to be an afternoon of harmless, family-friendly fun. Then suddenly two queues of children formed, from 2 year-olds (including my daughter) to teenagers, all waiting in line to grab a baseball bat and bash it onto a wooden barrel with all their might!

Call me a weakling, but the sight of children being encouraged by adults to tote a baseball bat and forcefully hit a barrel with it didn’t seem palatable to me. I asked some of the locals what this tradition was about, and as is the case in most countries with most people and most holiday traditions – they didn’t have a clue. Some told me about the origin of the tradition (there used to be a cat in the barrel, and the idea was to scare it away – even more dreadful!) but still didn’t know the meaning of it. Others talked vaguely about superstitious pagan rituals of banishing evil spirits. The funny thing – though somewhat expected – was that none of the locals, without exception, could see my point that kids banging on a barrel with a big baseball bat is something of an aggressive scene, not to say violent.

Further reading on the topic revealed that Fastelavn is really the Danish equivalent to Mardi Grad or Carnival – celebrations during the days before Lent, a historical fasting season in Christianity. And the slå katten af tønden thing (”hit the cat out of the barrel”) was indeed related to some safeguard against evil. And apparently the baseball bat bashing is not the only violent tradition during Fastelavn – there’s also fastelavnsris, bunches of twigs used by children to flog their parents to wake them up on the morning of Fastelavns Sunday. But I still couldn’t find an explanation for why a wooden barrel is used, requiring so much force to break it open that nothing short of a baseball bat would do. Couldn’t the Danes go for the Mexican cardboard piñata that bursts open with the soft pull of a string by an innocent child?

Perhaps some things are not meant to be understood but rather accepted. Holiday traditions are undoubtedly strange to the foreign eye in many countries – it took a comment from a foreigner to make me realize that calling the traditional Israeli Carnival-time cookies Hamantashen (literally meaning “the ears of Haman”, after the Jew-hating villain from the Book of Esther who ended up being hanged by Ahasuerus, King of Persia) was somewhat gory. Totally right, but for some reason it never occurred to me before.

So yes, being a foreigner gives one a great insight into things taken for granted by the locals. And every so often it means being shocked and puzzled in the most unexpected situations, while the locals look at you in wonder and dismiss you as weird. As you probably guessed by now, I quite enjoy those moments.

Lessons from Matador

A couple of months ago I completed two of my primary integration projects in Denmark: learning Danish and watching Matador. The former of course is a never-ending project and I’m far from truly completing it, but officially I should be speaking, writing and reading Danish quite fluently now that I’ve passed the final exams of my intensive ‘Danish for foreigners’ language course. But the latter was a more defined project – watching the entire TV series from start to finish, which I’m now proud to say I did.

So the other day I was trying to think which of the two gave me better insights into Danish society and culture. Learning Danish undoubtedly solved some of my earlier puzzlement over the choice of certain words in English typically used by Danes (for example, the interchangeable use of ‘fun’ and ‘funny’ or the funny expression ‘I don’t hope this happens’, not to mention the frequent use of the word ‘sparring’ in business contexts, or using ‘back-side’ when wanting to say ‘flip-side’; I now finally get the origin of those funny – and fun! – mistakes).

Learning Danish has also provided its fair share of frustrations and entertainment, the two often being inextricably linked. For example, the fact that there are four different words in Danish for ‘think’ (I still get my mener, tænker, tror and synes confused sometimes). Or the annoying abundance of words for ‘probably’ (still waiting for someone to explain to me the difference between sikkert, nok, vist, muligvis and sandsynligvis). Or the very curious fact that the Danes officially don’t have a future (tense, that is). Of course one can use ‘skal’ or ‘vil’ but those are apparently not often used, with the present tense prevailing when referring to the future, as a rule. You can only imagine the juicy discussions and giggles this triggered among us foreign learners, seeing an opportunity to draw parallels between the language and the country. But I digress.

Despite all this learning from my Danish classes I realized that watching Matador probably taught me more about this society. For years I’ve been hearing about this TV series that started having a mythical aura in my mind as over the years I observed many a Dane soliloquize about it with misty eyes. I’ve come to expect Matador to do nothing less than embody Danishness. Having now watched it I can say it doesn’t quite do that, but it is for sure a superbly-acted well-written drama that can teach foreigners a lot about the history of Denmark – and more importantly, Denmark’s own interpretation of it – during an important period in the development of this nation (1929 to 1947). For the sake of those poor souls who haven’t had the fortune of watching Matador I decided to share with you my main observations from the series:

1.      Danes like to drink coffee. Maybe not the biggest message in the series, but I couldn’t get over the fact that the majority of the dialogue through the series takes place over a cup of coffee (rather like the way alcohol and cigarettes are used in Mad Men). I never actually counted how many times the characters were seen drinking coffee in an average episode but I would place my bet on approximately 10 times an episode. In fact, there was only one activity that could compete with coffee drinking in Matador, which leads me to the next observation.

2.      Danes like to read newspapers. I know this was a way to communicate the characters’ political and social viewpoints in the story, but it still made me laugh sometimes that almost every scene opened or closed with a close up on someone reading a particular newspaper. I guess if the series was shot today they would all be carrying iPads around.

3.      The only truly happy Danes are farmers. Every character in Matador seemed to have their share of fortunes and misfortunes, but somehow the only ones who came across as more or less happy with their lives were Oluf and Kathrine Larsen, Ingeborg’s parents. Was that an intentional subliminal message, or is it me?

4.      In Denmark, business ambition and family life don’t go together. Be it Mads Skjern, Hans Christian Varnæs or Agnes Jensen – it seems that commercial drive entails marital or children problems in the Danish narrative.

5.      World War II was a strange period in Denmark. That one is naturally an obvious one – the war brought havoc and destruction to most European countries. But having grown up in Israel I was trained to believe all Danes were saints during that period because of what they did for the Jews. It was interesting to see a more realistic portrayal of that time, which also helps explain the complexity of the relations between Denmark and Germany today.

6.      People from Jutland are not welcome in Zealand. OK, that one I knew even before watching Matador.

So these are just some of my take-aways from this important series, more on the superficial side I must admit (you can find a more serious analysis here). And to all the newcomers in Denmark, I do unreservedly advise you to learn the language. But I also warmly recommend watching Matador – it’s a thoroughly fun and funny affair!