A few years ago, a friend wrote a blog post posing the question of whether Danes are friendlier in Greenland than they are back home in Denmark. From my perspective – having lived in both places – I’m pleased to say that they are. Despite being part of the Kingdom of Denmark, Greenland is a completely different country in almost every respect. So Danes who move to Greenland find themselves living as expats. And as expats, they need to make a real effort to socialize. In Denmark, they don’t.
When we lived in Copenhagen, we were keen to make friends. But the usual methods didn’t seem to work. For example, having dinner together. It took us a long time to realize that you can’t simply ask someone around to dinner. For years, I had good working relationships with colleagues, and for years, they socialized with me only at work. Of course, there were a few exceptions. But there are also colleagues who have been to my house for dinner many times over the years and yet I still don’t even know where they live. They would not countenance the idea of inviting me to dinner. I don’t think it’s because they don’t like me. It’s just not done. Not long after we moved to Denmark, and several months after first meeting some very nice and interesting Danes through work, we invited them to dinner. About six months later, one of them felt he then knew me well enough to confide that they had been bewildered by our dinner invitation. As far as I can tell, to be invited to someone’s home, one must be,
(a) a childhood friend
(b) a very close friend, preferably lifelong
(c) family
Danes who do not fall into the above categories have visited me in my home. They do it because I’m a foreigner and therefore I obviously don’t know the rules. I’m ok with this, and I also enjoy the idea that they are uncomfortable with having to deal with it.
But what about going out for a drink? At my work in Copenhagen, my colleagues would drift silently out of the building early at the end of the week. Tumbleweeds blowing down the corridor would have seemed appropriate on those desolate Friday afternoons. Only the handful of expats would ever stick around and go out for an end of week drink.
So having failed to socialize with Danes through work, we made a concerted effort to go out to try to meet new people. But in that regard, I am reminded of the words of Sixto Rodriguez, “I make sixteen solid half hour friendships every evening.” After having fascinating and personal conversations with new ‘friends,’ they would end the evening by saying, “Bye,” and would walk out the door never to be seen again, leaving us open-mouthed. Why didn’t they want to continue this burgeoning relationship that seemed to be going so well? I suspect it was for the reason that one person articulated succinctly, and directly to me – “Why would I be friends with you? You’re a foreigner. You’ll leave one day.” This surprised me. Your best friend might die tomorrow, I thought. Would it be better for you that you had never known them?
Only toward the end of our time living in Copenhagen did I realize the rare kindness shown by a Dane who would ultimately become a dear friend. Having never even met me before, she had offered that I could stay with her during my first weeks in Denmark when I had nowhere to live. I’d done the same myself for others back in Australia. At the time I had no idea that this wasn’t normal.
Denmark didn’t work out for me. Despite finally making a handful of excellent Danish friends, we made the decision that life was too short to struggle making human connections as expats in Denmark. Over the years since we left, I’ve sometimes wondered how much of that was down to us and how much was down to something inherent in Danish culture. A survey reported this week in major Danish newspaper, Politikken, suggests it was probably not much down to us. In the survey of expats from sixty four countries, Denmark was voted worst place in the world for making friends…for the third year running.
I’m glad I live in Greenland, where we have made great Danish friends with relative ease.
