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 rememberance ceremony, forgotten

You’d have to be aged 85 or older now to remember the war, and Germany is one of Denmark’s greatest friends and Allies.

In addition, the elderly who do remember the occupation and the blackout generally do not live with their families in Denmark, families to whom they might pass on the tradition.

Old people in Denmark primarily live alone, and municipal employees come to their house once or twice a week to help with cleaning and make sure they take their medicine.

When they can no longer take care of themselves, they’re moved to a publicly-funded care home or a hospice, but this is generally only for the last few months of life.

Living cooperatives against loneliness

The elderly in Denmark are often lonely.

In India or the Middle East, older people usually live with their families; in the US, where I come from, they join “active adult” communities where they can golf and have affairs.

The Danish policy that encourages old people to remain in their homes as long as they can isolates them, in my opinion.

That’s why the Danish government, mindful of the fact that the average age in Denmark is advancing quickly, is encouraging the idea of bofæelleskab, or living cooperatives.

That’s when a number of older people live together in a house or large apartment, a bit like university students, with a shared kitchen and laundry facilities.

This gives them a bit of company and, not coincidentally, frees up a lot of individual houses for younger families to move in when the old people move out.

You're not the hip new designer or management trainee

Now, when I say old people, I’m talking about people over 67, which is the current Danish pension age. That will crawl up to age 70 for kids born today.

The problem for many people is that it’s hard to get a job after age 60. No one wants to hire you as a hip new designer or innovative pharma developer or management trainee.

Older people at the very top of the success ladder often spend this time on various Boards of Directors, leveraging their years of business experience.

Below that I meet a lot of older people who have tossed their career and their specialized educations aside and become office managers, or work in retail, or work in kindergartens.

They’re done climbing the career ladder and want something people-focused that is, and I quote, “something to do until I retire.”

A word to honor the old in Denmark
Old people don’t get any special respect in Danish culture.

I taught a group of Nepali students in Denmark once, and after the presentation in the Q&A period, they wanted to know if there were some special Danish word they could use to honor the elderly, an important part of their culture in Nepal.

But there’s no specific word in Denmark to honor the elderly. Especially these days, when the people who are old now are the former 1960s hippies who got rid of honorifics like Herr Hansen and Fru Jensen.

The elderly today in Denmark are called by their first names, just like everyone else.

Read more at howtoliveindenmark.com.

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 in September.

Short growing season

The growing season in Denmark is short. If you miss the planting deadlines, you’re probably out of luck.

And even if you are in luck, the amount you spend at the garden center will far outstrip the amount it would take you to buy the same foods at the corner market.

But Danes love to garden, they love to touch the Earth. Denmark industrialized fairly late compared to the rest of Europe – really not until the late 19th century – and even then it focused on cooperative agriculture for export. Denmark is still known around the world for its butter and bacon.

The "gaard" is the family farm

Many Danes still carry the name of their family farm in the name they use today.

The Danish word for farm is “gaard”, so the names of jewelry designer Ole Lynggaard, or golfer Nicolai Højgaard, or politician Pia Kjærsgaard, all reference what was once the family farm, the “gaard”.

This love for nature why weather is always an appropriate topic of conversation among Danes. They’re also very good at historical weather. They’ll tell you that the rains this April are just like the rains of April 2014, or that we haven’t seen this type of wind since the summer of 2006.

Colony gardens

If you live in Denmark with a house in the suburbs with – parcel houses, they’re often called – you have lots of room for gardening. But people who live in apartments often have what is called “colony gardens.”

Colony gardens are a little patch of land set aside in the cities, or near them, for urban residents to have a garden. They usually build a little house on the plot as well, although you’re only allowed to live there during the summer. The electricity and the water usually get switched off during the winter.

The houses are generally wooden, small, cramped, and a little thrown-together. There are often chipped plates and glasses, old chairs with cushions in a grandmotherly fabric, a few board games ready for rainy days. A flag pole and a big Danish flag to put up for holidays. And always, always, they are surrounded by a hedge for privacy.

The colony gardens are run by an association, so you’re supposed to be friends with your neighbors, but keep them at a distance. Good fences make good neighbors and all that.

Getting a colony garden requires either buying one or getting on a long, long list to get one, which means that very few of the 15% non-ethnic Danish residents of Denmark have colony gardens. As I mentioned in an earlier podcast, the list of residents tends to look like the 1957 Copenhagen phone book.

The Unity Garden

In my Copenhagen neighborhood, which is extremely diverse, there was initiative to change this a few years ago. A little bit of land freed up by the railroad tracks, and the idea was to create a Unity Garden. Half of the land was set off for people who were not born in Denmark, and half was set off for people who were.

The idea was to meet up, work together, exchange knowledge, have summer picnics, meet across cultures.

Read more at howtoliveindenmark.com

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, that person owes you a chocolate Easter egg. If you can't guess, you owe them a chocolate Easter Egg whenever they reveal themselves.

Needless to say, gækkebrev are very popular with small children looking for candy.

(The "gække" refers to a vintergække flower that used to accompany the letter back in the day)

But the tradition is slowly dying out, thanks to Denmark's widespread digitalization. Paper letters have almost disappeared; it's quite possible to go for months without receiving any physical mail at all.

Stamps and coins are also dying out. While Denmark got a new king more than a year ago, I've yet to see his image on any stamps or coins...because I so rarely see stamps or coins.

Read more at howtoliveindenmark.com.

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, dumped the religion

The Danes have kept the party while stripping away its source, much like the non-firmations some Danes choose over confirmations, or the "namegiving ceremonies" that have replaced baptisms in some circles.

I once read that the safer a society is, the less likely it is to be religious. The more comfortable and secure people are, the less likely they are to turn to a higher power to sort things out.

That’s certainly true in Denmark.

They find religious faith strange

The majority of Danes find religious faith strange, and perhaps a sign of ignorance or moral weakness. I have had Danes tell me that believing in God is like believing in Santa Claus.

They’ll go to church on Christmas Eve, or for a wedding, or maybe a funeral.

But if you tell Danes that you go to church on a regular basis because you like it, they will suddenly become very suspicious, and maybe a little angry.

They may assume you have backward views, that you don’t like gay people, perhaps that you believe that women should be subservient.

Or maybe that you don’t drink alcohol, which is a serious charge in Denmark.

Read more at howtoliveindenmark.com

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 20% of earners in Denmark, however, maybe even the top 10%, you go skiing. Not in Denmark, which doesn’t have any mountains for downhill skiing, or enough snow for cross-country skiing.

You go to Sweden for cheap skiing, Norway for slightly more expensive skiing, or to France or Switzerland for luxury skiing where you can show off your Rolex Explorer wristwatch on the slopes.

Two different types of Januaries

The two different types of Januaries illustrate how the gap between the rich and poor in Denmark has widened in recent decades.

Denmark is still, culturally, an egalitarian culture, and it’s still considered bad taste to show off your Rolex watch here in Denmark, but there’s no debating that as the country has become prosperous over the past 30 years, the gap between rich and poor has widened.

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 called Kolonial, or Colonial.

It features long-life products, like spices and nuts, that used to come from trading posts in the faraway Danish colonies.

Over time, through war losses and independence movements, the Danish Empire shrank…and today we’re going to talk about how it might shrink further.

The US has made clear that it wants Greenland to be part of its own territory. Are they serious about this? And what do the Danes think?

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 common than it is in other European countries. In the Danish job market, staying in the same job for many years, or not moving within the company, might raise eyebrows. Denmark doesn't really offer lifetime employment.

In the audio version of my book, How to Work in Denmark: Tips for Finding a Job, Succeeding at Work, and Understanding your Danish Boss, now available on Amazon Audible, Saxo, Apple Books, and other platforms, I address this topic.

The Danish job market is incredibly fluid, with easy hiring and firing processes, much simpler than in many other European nations, including Sweden. Being let go isn't a career killer here - it happens to most people sooner or later. Flexicurity in Denmark makes it inevitable.

The situation is a little trickier for people who are in Denmark on a work visa. Losing a job could mean a short window to find another one before having to leave the country. It also complicates job switching, as the new employer must take over the visa sponsorship. However, once you achieve permanent residency, you can fully participate in the Danish job-switching culture.

Because Danish employers can let you go at almost any time—with few restrictions—it’s crucial to stay proactive as an employee. Keep your skills updated, continuously learn new things in your field, and maintain an up-to-date LinkedIn profile.