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PODCAST

How to Live in Denmark

Kay Xander Mellish

Quick takes on life in Denmark, in 10 minutes or less. Life as an international in Denmark, one of the world"s most homogenous countries, isn"t always easy. In Denmark"s longest-running English-language podcast, Kay Xander Mellish, an American who has lived in Denmark for more than a decade, offers tips for enjoying your time in "the world"s happiest country" plus insights on Danish culture and Danish working culture. Whether you"re living in Denmark, thinking about moving to Denmark, or interested

society & culture places & travel

All Episodes

09:17

October, democracy in denmark, and competitive poster...

How to Live in Denmark ·

2025/10/13

Election posters are a colorful part of democracy in Denmark. In October, the campaigns swing into gear, and when the whistle blows on a set date at precisely noon, teams of poster-hangers cover the country with the faces of their candidates. It's highly competitive; It’s against the law to take down posters once they’re hung, so there’s a big rush to get your party’s poster up first. So on that October afternoon, you’ll see teams of young people rushing about Copenhagen, Aarhus, and countryside

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09:16

September, elite sport, and the not-quite death of...

How to Live in Denmark ·

2025/09/16

Denmark may be a small country, but it produces world-class athletes in cycling, tennis, handball, badminton, and golf. How do they do it? And how does the tax-financed effort to create athletic champions fit with the culture code of "Jante Law", the idea is that no one should think themselves better than anyone else? September is when fall sports season starts in Denmark. The badminton league begins, so does volleyball and basketball and hockey. Most importantly, the handball season kicks

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08:20

August, The first day of school, and how children...

How to Live in Denmark ·

2025/08/10

Denmark is a very good place to be a child, and to have children, yet the birthrate is dropping as it is in so many other countries. Some preschools have shut down due to lack of kids. Just this year Denmark reached a population of 6 million – a big landmark - but that’s mostly due to immigration, not more children being born. All the initiatives that experts recommend for increasing fertility in other countries already exist in Denmark, like child payments for parents, long parental leaves after

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07:59

July, Nature in Denmark, and following The Daisy...

How to Live in Denmark ·

2025/07/01

July is vacation month in Denmark, and it’s ironic that many Danes go elsewhere on vacation at just this time of year, when you have the best chance of good weather in Denmark. And I do mean chance – there is never any guarantee. Some Danes go abroad, driving vacations to Southern Europe are popular. There’s a well-known cycle in which the summer weather is good one year, so everyone plans a vacation in Denmark the following year, and then the weather is awful, so everyone plans a foreign vacation

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08:08

June: Danish pride, women in uniform, and the reverse...

How to Live in Denmark ·

2025/06/01

As of this month, girls who turn 18 can be drafted into the Danish military. This is new, even though girls in Norway and Sweden have been eligible for the draft for some time. Denmark is proud of its record on gender equality, so maybe it’s a wonder it hasn’t happened sooner. After all, more than half of the medical doctors in Denmark are female. More than half of the priests in Denmark are female. The prime minister is female. At only about 10% female, the military is clearly lagging behind. The

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08:19

May, the candle in the window, and getting old in...

How to Live in Denmark ·

2025/05/02

There's a lovely May tradition in Denmark of setting a candle in the window on the evening of May 4. This is to commemorate the surrender of the Germans and the end of the Nazi occupation in 1945. The Nazis imposed a blackout on Denmark to confuse the Allied air forces, so now that they were defeated, a candle in a window became a small symbol of rebellious light. I intend to participate every year on May 4, but I often forget, and to be honest I see very few candles in windows these days. A

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08:10

April, Gardening in Denmark, and what it means to be...

How to Live in Denmark ·

2025/04/03

As the long Danish winter finally draws to an end, it’s time for Danes to start planting their gardens. Now, in early April, it’s rhubarb, parsnips, cabbage. After the risk of frost is gone, in late April, you can put down some beets, and chives, and parsley – all good traditional Danish food. By May, you can try with the tomatoes, which may or may not ripen depending on whether you get a warm, sunny summer, always a roll of the dice in Denmark. One year we ended up with hard, green tomatoes

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08:22

March, "Gække Letters", and the things lost in...

How to Live in Denmark ·

2025/03/05

Gækkebrev are a great Danish tradition, but like many other Danish traditions, they are fighting to survive amid the country’s ambitious digital agenda. What is a gækkebrev, or gække letter? A single piece of paper, cut into a lace-like design somewhat like a snowflake, sent anonymously in the days before Easter. A poem is handwritten on the letter, but it is unsigned...except for a number of dots that correspond to the number of letters in the sender's name. If you can guess who sent the letter,

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06:55

February, the Cat in the Barrel, and the Absence of...

How to Live in Denmark ·

2025/02/09

Fastelavn is one of the Danes’ favorite holidays. It takes place in February, when the light is finally beginning to come back after a long season of winter darkness. "Hitting the cat in the barrel" - which used to involve a real cat, but no longer does - and eating messy fastelavn buns full of custard are part of the holiday. What's no longer really part of the holiday is its religious background, the idea that this is a party that takes place before the long lockdown of Lent. Kept the party,

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08:02

January, Skiing, and Income Inequality: The Danish...

How to Live in Denmark ·

2025/01/30

If you’re one of the bottom 80% of Danish earners, you’ll probably spend most of your dark January evenings and weekends at home, hoping your bank account can recover from Christmas excesses. Restaurants have a lot of empty tables this time of year. Shops mostly process the return of unwanted Christmas presents. Now, this can and often is packaged as hygge. Candles, TV, sweaters, warm slippers, hot tea. But it’s often just being broke and not being able to go anywhere. Yet if you’re part of the top

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07:54

The Danish Empire - without Greenland?

How to Live in Denmark ·

2025/01/05

Denmark, as Danes like to tell you, is a little country. But it used to be a much bigger country, a bit of an empire. Norway was once part of Denmark. Iceland was once part of Denmark. The southern half of Sweden and a bit of northern Germany used to be part of Denmark. What is now called the US Virgin Islands used to be part of Denmark. And Denmark had colonies in Africa and India, which is why when you’ll go into many Danish supermarkets – even online supermarkets – you’ll see a section

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07:17

Learning Danish through song lyrics

How to Live in Denmark ·

2024/10/02

One of the tips I often give to newcomers in Denmark is to learn Danish through song lyrics. Find a Danish lyricist whose music you enjoy listening to on repeat. The repetition will help you get a feel for how the Danish language flows, and you’ll have something to dance to during those long, dark winter months. I did this myself when I first arrived in Denmark, and learned a great deal of Danish from the witty, self-mocking songs of Carsten Lykke. Here are a few suggestions for your own

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06:51

Job switching in Denmark

How to Live in Denmark ·

2024/09/03

Denmark has one of the highest job mobility rates in the world - about 20% of Danes start new jobs each year. Frequent job changes are a reflection of the Danish concept of "flexicurity" – flexibility with the security of the welfare state. As a matter of fact, if you stay in the same job for many years in Denmark, people start to wonder why. Young people switch jobs the most, of course, but even people in the prime of their careers, as well as employees over 55, job hopping in Denmark is much more

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09:12

The Design Quirks of Copenhagen

How to Live in Denmark ·

2024/08/08

Did you know that Copenhagen has its own color? It’s called Copenhagen Green, and it’s a dark emerald green, mixed with a fair amount of black. A little like the dark green we see on the leaves of trees here late in August. Pantone 3435C, for you designer types. You’ll notice that all Copenhagen benches are this color, an you will see Copenhagen Green on many wooden doors and window frames in the old city, as well as lamp posts, railings, even small bridges in the beautiful Ørestedsparken. This was

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06:35

Who is Holger Danske?

How to Live in Denmark ·

2024/07/07

Many countries have a fictional character who represents them. Uncle Sam for the USA, Marianne in France, Mother India. Others have a legendary figure, who was real at one point but is now shrouded in myth, like King Arthur in England. For Denmark, Holger Danske is both. He was probably real, although he didn’t live in Denmark. He was a Danish knight living in France in 8th century, serving Charlemagne and he appears in several of the epic poems of the time as Ogier the Dane. When those poems were

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09:01

The white magic of the Danish graduation hat

How to Live in Denmark ·

2024/06/12

In June of each year, the streets of Denmark are suddenly full of young people wearing stiff white caps with bands of various colors - burgundy, midnight blue, light blue. These teenagers have just graduated from gymnasium, the Danish equivalent of high school, and the white hat is a sign of that accomplishment. They wear the white hat everywhere they go for the two or three weeks after final exams, and it awakens a deep sentimentality in the usually practical and private Danes. It has a sort of

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07:52

Do you have to speak Danish to work in Denmark?

How to Live in Denmark ·

2024/04/29

If you’re only in Denmark for a few months, it might not be worth the investment in time to learn much more than the basic pleasantries in Danish. But you plan to stay in Denmark for more than a year or so, it’s a good idea to learn some Danish – and your visa may require that you do so. Even if you’re not forced to, it’s a good idea to learn Danish if you plan to make a commitment to Denmark. It’ll make daily life easier: you’ll stop wanting to tear your hair out every time you run across a website

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07:12

Why Danes Find Compliments So Awkward

How to Live in Denmark ·

2024/03/24

A story I’ve heard over and over again when I talk to internationals working in Denmark is this: They thought they were going to get fired. They’d been working for a year or so at professional-level job in Denmark, often one they’d been recruited for, but they’d never heard any positive comments from their manager. They started to worry. They were doing their best, but maybe it just wasn’t good enough. Were they going to lose the job? Were they going to have to go back home, humiliated, and explain

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08:43

Romance in Denmark

How to Live in Denmark ·

2024/02/06

Denmark’s doing a big recruitment campaign now, trying to get young professionals to bring their skills to Denmark, and a lot of them are single when they arrive. If they want to meet someone and don’t meet someone, and if they want a serious relationship and a family but can’t get started, they often go home again. So, in the name of economic development, here are my tips on romance in Denmark. Bringing your own dating culture I talk a lot in my speeches about how people bring their own work

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07:10

Finding light in the Danish Winter Darkness

How to Live in Denmark ·

2024/01/10

Many internationals newly arrived in Denmark struggle with the long Danish winter. The darkness that starts to fall in the early afternoon means that 5pm looks just like 8pm, which looks just like midnight, which looks just like 5am. Dense, inky black sky. During the daytime there’s a dim grey light, sometimes accompanied by a soupy fog of tiny raindrops. It’s tough to handle - even for Danes. Many people living through this time in Denmark describe feeling low-energy – sløj is the very descriptive

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147 results

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