Det var et yndigt land

There´s a well-loved song here in Denmark called "Det er et yndigt land" which means "It is a lovely country" or "It is a pretty land." Much in the same way that as we grow older we fail (thankfully) to notice how old our spouses and friends are really getting, the Danes have failed to notice how appalling they have made a vast expanse of their mostly bland landscape. It may be apocryphal but sometimes one hears of how a frog will not leave a pan of water if the temperature is raised gradually from frog-friendly to boiling. Because the increase is gradual the frog doesn´t notice the change and has no trigger to jump out. In a similar fashion, I think Danes have not noticed that their land is no longer the pretty patchwork of fields and forest dotted with small, red-bricked towns nestling in hollows or along rivers that it may once have been. Nor is it the blue-skied fairy-tale place pictured in the holiday postcards, promotional literature or picture calendars. However, idea of the pretty land dominates the the physical reality that about 80% of their towns are mostly sad, unremarkable places or worse, a foaming, unstructured clutter of boxes strewn amongst infrastructure designed by engineers with an Aspergeresque inability to understand that people have emotional needs beyond the requirements for roadways, power-lines and railways.
The other way of looking at is that as long as Danes have a cosy private home, the appearance of the outside landscape does not matter. Of course, it is worth recalling that the private family home (the suburban home) is intended to cut the individual off from society. Richard Sennett has written about this in The Uses Of Disorder (1971). That the pretty land is pretty no more is not important for a society content with the sofas, lamps and other consumer goods that VS Naipaul described in my last post. Yes, Denmark is getting uglier but nobody notices and if they do they don´t much care. The Danes are poster-children for what happens when a privatised life forgets the value of the public world outside the front door.

Ruko locks

Let´s start with an annoying daily detail before we get to the big societal issues. A very large number of doors in Denmark are fitted with locks made by a local firm called Ruko. Their ingenious design requires that you use both of your hands to open the door. One hand must twist the upper knob while your other must turn the lower handle. The upper knob requires a fair amount of twist-force acting upon a small area. This means you need a free hand and a good strong grip to open the door. If you are carrying something in one hand you must put it down. If your hands are slippery you may well lose your grip of the door. And if you are an older person with a weaker grip you´ll just be fed up with the whole thing. Why would a company persist in producing such a manifestly unhelpful design? One answer is because by dint of being made and designed in Dermark it is axiomatically world-class design!

Welcome to Denmark

Welcome to Denmark. The CIA World Factbook says this:

"Once the seat of Viking raiders and later a major north European power, Denmark has evolved into a modern, prosperous nation that is participating in the general political and economic integration of Europe. It joined NATO in 1949 and the EEC (now the EU) in 1973. However, the country has opted out of certain elements of the European Union's Maastricht Treaty, including the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), European defense cooperation, and issues concerning certain justice and home affairs."

When we think of Denmark we think of little but some clichés related to furniture, a certain mermaid, Hans Christian Andersen and Copenhagen. In the course of this blog I would like to jot down some of the details and thoughts I´ve had during my time here in this land, the home of the self-declared happiest people on earth.
Denmark is not in itself a very interesting place but why it is not interesting is of interest. Denmark represents a good example of what occurs when the values of technocracy prevail over more fuzzy, uncertain and unmeasurable human values. Denmark´s measurable parameters (health, wealth and safety) are all quite high. The bits that evade measurement are not faring so well. These unhappy outcomes are harder to see which is why it has taken me three years to understand why being here is so profoundly tedious: the dull towns, the flavourless food, the treeless and bland landscape and, in my view, unjustified self-satisfaction.

If I can manage to keep this blog going you can look forward to exigeses on the dirty railways stations (Kolding, Copenhagen), inhumane pork production methods (7 million pigs castrated annually without anæsthetic), the flavourless yoghurt (all made by one firm), the annoying pavements (cobbles and concrete), the obsession with consumer goods (flat screen televisions and €40 wine openers), the cult of architecture (styled boxes, bungalows), the sterile office parks (boxes on lawns), the degenerating local language (pardon?) and many other little insights that are not mentioned in the publicity and which don´t make it into guide books such as Lonely Planet or Let´s Go Europe.

Mange kærlige hilsener!