Job switching in Denmark is common - Denmark has one of the highest job mobility rates in the OECD. Up to 20% of Danes will change job this year, and not just young people - people in the prime of their careers and people over 55 also change jobs more frequently than elsewhere in Europe. If you don’t change jobs regularly in Denmark, or at a minimum change jobs within a company if you’re there for a few years, people might wonder why. The post Job switching in Denmark appeared first on HowtoliveinDenmark.com ..read more

The How to Live in Denmark podcast is available on Spotify, iTunes, iHeart Radio, and several other platforms. Find out here how to download this long-running podcast about life in Denmark. The post How to listen to the “How to Live in Denmark” podcast appeared first on HowtoliveinDenmark.com ..read more

Among the design quirks of Copenhagen is the color "Copenhagen Green", a green-black mix you will see on every bench in town plus many doors and window frames in the old city. Other quirks include cut-off corners on old buildings, an old fire safety measure, as horse-drawn fire engines had trouble turning around full corners, and cylindrical skyscrapers with no corners at all. The post The design quirks of Copenhagen appeared first on HowtoliveinDenmark.com ..read more

Our fun new self-paced audio tour of Helsingør, aka "Elsinore", the setting of Shakespeare's great tragedy "Hamlet", will take you to Kronborg Castle, the setting of the play, plus the medieval city and the famous shipyards, with a stop by a statue known as the "male little mermaid." The post Take our “How to Live in Denmark” Helsingør self-guided audio tour appeared first on HowtoliveinDenmark.com ..read more

Many countries have a fictional character who represents them. Uncle Sam for the USA, Marianne in France, Bharat Mata or 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 translated into Old Norsk, he became Oddgeir danski, which gradually morphed int ..read more

Visiting Denmark? Take our fun new audio tour of Helsingør, aka “Elsinore”, the setting of Shakespeare’s great tragedy “Hamlet”. Designed in co-operation with VoiceMap Audio Tours, this is a GPS-triggered tour, so you can put your phone away and focus on the sights and sounds of this fabulous medieval city while I tell you amusing stories. Walk the ramparts of Kronborg Castle, where the opening scenes of “Hamlet” take place, and hear about the king who built it and his 14-year-old bride. Explore the streets of medieval Helsingør, and visit a quiet 15th century religious cloister that was onc ..read more

I’m occasionally hired to do cultural training for international specialists coming to Denmark. This involves four hours of explaining the basics of Danish life – the banking system, the health care system, how to shop for food – for example, the fact that yellow is the color of discounts in Denmark. If something has a yellow price tag, the price has been cut. And I always include a section on the Danish year. By the Danish year, I mean the rhythm of vacation weeks and holidays from year to year, from bonfires on Sankt Hans at midsummer to the eating of duck on Morten’s Day in November. Morte ..read more

In one of my seminars, I met an Irishman who had fallen in love with a Danish woman. He agreed to move to Denmark and thought it would be better for his job prospects if he learned to speak Danish. “Why not just learn Norwegian? It’s easier,” his girlfriend said cheerfully. The poor man did start to learn Norwegian, only to be told by his laughing girlfriend that her suggestion was an example of the famous Danish humor. But she was correct that Norwegian is probably easier to pick up. Danish is a difficult language to learn, even if you speak its close linguistic cousins, English and German ..read more

If you remember only one thing, remember this, I say when I speak to newcomers in Denmark. ??? ??? ???? ???? ??? ???? ??. Too often internationals find themselves overwhelmed in Denmark, but hesitate in asking for assistance, because they don’t want to appear incompetent or dumb. Danes, meanwhile, hesitate to offer help, because they don’t want to suggest that the international is incapable of doing the job they’re being paid for, or step over the international’s personal boundaries. “Jeg vil ikke trænge på” is the Danish-language way of saying it – which loosely translates to “I don’t want to ..read more

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 a 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 the whole thing to their friends and family? Expecting bad news This was what was on their mi ..read more