What the Danish and European media misunderstand (and misrepresent) about America, and vice versa. And other stuff.
It’s a red-letter day in Scotland. As the DR headline puts it, “Starting today it’s free to menstruate in Scotland.” Menstruation has always been free of charge in Scotland, as far as I can tell, but beginning today tampons and menstrual pads will be available free of charge to that country’s menstruators. (Really to everyone: apparently…
It’s Sankt Hans Aften tonight—St. John’s Eve, in English. It’s the Danish (and Scandinavian) celebration of the summer solstice. All across the land, tonight, Danes will gather around bonfires, enjoying picnic dinners with friends and neighbors, singing songs, and simply enjoying the long and beautiful evening. It’s an enchanting tradition. In many cases, the bonfires…
Tom Jensen is the editor in chief of Berlingske Tidende, and after years of coddling the American left he seems to be waking up to the fact that something is rotten in America: I’m not “cisgendered.” I’m a man.Tom Jensen, Berlingske.dk, May 1 Jensen is apparently trying to bring his newspaper’s Danish readers up to…
Personal update: Covid appears to have completed its course through our household. The girls are back in school and Herself is up and about, although the virus seems to be lingering with her. And once again I was left untouched as covid struck everyone around me. One would think that by the time February 2022…
This is my nineteenth Christmas in Denmark, so the Danish Christmas traditions no longer trouble, discomfit, or surprise me. They’re the traditions my own children have grown up with; I’ve not only metabolized Danish Christmas internally, but helped advance it forward to a new generation. And yet it was never my intention to raise my…
There was an interesting piece in the Washington Post the other day. Denmark appears to have beaten covid-19 — for now. Here’s how it did it.Michael Bang Petersen & Alexander Bor, Washington Post, Sep. 20 The lede is: “For the most part, Danes avoided blaming and shaming their fellow citizens.” That’s more than a lede:…
Toward the end of August, Danish Health Minister Magnus Heunicke announced that Covid-19 would lose its standing as a public health emergency (in Danish, a “samfundskritisk sygdom”). The Health Ministry’s press release was headlined “The government will not extend the classification of covid-19 as a public health emergency in Denmark.” A TV2 article about the…
Today is Sankt Hans Aften in Denmark: St. John’s Eve. The holiday is a celebration of John the Baptist’s birth, which the Gospel dates six months prior to Jesus’s: thus St. John’s Day is six months before Christmas. (More or less: changing calendars over the years have resulted in the slight offset.) Skt. Hans Aften…
I had some other stuff queued up to write about today, but all of that has to be set aside. As everyone in Denmark and very few people in America know, the Danish national handball team defeated Sweden 26-24 last night in Cairo to win the world championship. (The US team qualified for the tournament…
I don’t know how I overlooked this early December opinion piece in Berlingske: it’s hard to think of a headline more appropriate for this blog: Stop the Americanization of Danish Culture, Jacob Mchangama, Berlingske.dk, 7 December I should remind non-Danish readers that “Amerikanske tilstande” translates literally as “American conditions.” The phrase has a long pedigree…
I’ve spent a lot of time among Danes defending America from basic misconceptions about the country, and a lot of my time among Americans defending Denmark in the same way. I’m not talking about politics, but much more basic stuff. Geography. Climate. Cuisine. Education. The practicalities of daily life. Denmark and the United States are…
The American chattering class has been entertaining itself for the past couple of weeks with Jill Biden’s insistence on being addressed as Doctor Jill Biden. The right has been mocking her for it, the left has been attacking that mockery as sexism. Is There a Doctor in the White House? Not if You Need an…
Stupidity has metastasized in America. We can start with an article from DR: “Slut med hvide stemmer til ikke-hvide roller: ‘The Simpsons’-karakter får ny stemme,” the upshot of which is that the role of Carl Carlson, voiced for more than three decades by Hank Azaria, will in the premiere of their 32nd season be voiced…
It’s the last day of August, so I want to take a moment to address one of the few things that’s always bothered me about Denmark. Here’s the Encyclopedia Britannica’s definition of autumn: Autumn, season of the year between summer and winter during which temperatures gradually decrease. It is often called fall in the United…
