Well, here’s a surprise – it turns out that the Danes are some of the happiest people on earth. And the social scientists, as reported by the New York Times, think they know why: “In a paper appearing in the Dec. 23 issue of the medical journal BMJ, researchers… conclude that the country’s secret is a culture of low expectations.”
So let’s all be happy the “meh” way!
Although it is a well-known fact that there are no grey elephants in Denmark. Go figure.
I’ve got a pretty close friend from Denmark. He’s extremely happy. Of course, he’s rich and his wife is super hot (and 10 years younger than him).
True, but there are white ones: http://www.medals.org.uk/denmark/denmark001.htm
Aren’t we also the nation that drinks the most? I don’t think thats a coincidence.
I quite like it here. Except in the worst of the winter. (September to April)
And this is a surprise - why? All they do is eat and drink, why wouldn’t they be happy?
I need to move to Denmark. Can I stay with Viggo Mortensen? He would make me happy…
I’ve been living here for a year and a half, and I’ve wanted to talk about this a lot!
Danes are an interesting bunch. They’ve got the Scandinavian thing going full on, but probably have the least-miserable winter weather.
As far as being happy the “meh” way, it can seem that way to us foreigners. But this is a country of homogenization. Put it this way, it’s not a country of ups and downs. You’ll never be poor here, but your chance of being insanely rich is also low. As far as intelligence goes I imagine it spans the normal spectrum of homo-sapiens, but the society is generally very educated. Even those that go on to trade schools seem to be quite knowledgable in some sense.
As far as I can tell, and any Danes please correct me if I’m lying, Danish ideas of happiness and success are very different from the American one. America is all about competition. Everything is a competition. In high school there is the Valedictorian. I lived in New York and I was very surprised how much emphasis people put on your success level. Either that or your presumed level of innate talent or creativity. We sort of worship people who are wildly successful or talented. I even got chastised once in New York for claiming interest in a band who was new to me, but about a year after it’s “new and hip” prime in New York. That pissed me off because what should it matter?
To the average Dane, I’d say the ideal for happiness is to get a nice job, and have a nice house with a nice girl. Then to have your circle of friends and be content. If nobody else is concerned about being rich and famous, then neither are your. Danish society doesn’t worship celebrities as much, and certainly prohibits ostentation. Celebrities can be seen riding bikes around Copenhagen just like the rest of us. If you drive a BMW, you are seen as acting out.
So for your typical Anders Pedersen, it’s not so hard to get to the top of what society expects is the goal. The average Dane seems to drink a lot too. The girls are also stunning. I have no idea why, but I imagine it has to do with a low level of poverty. You can work at an unskilled job in Denmark and usually get enough money not only to get by but also enjoy some finer things (eating out, entertainment, etc…) in life.
It’s a very difficult thing to get around and may sound depressing to Americans, but that’s truely the way it is here. Once you live here you can really understand the Danish way. Not much is asked of you, and it is pretty easy to reach the standard.
I say, and always have, that if Denmark had good weather, it’d be the best place on earth. The weather just kills you in the winter. However in the summer it is very cool as the whole place comes to life.
Well, we all sort of assumed that they just spent all their time moping about their dead dads and incestuous uncles.
My wife and I took our honeymoon in Denmark (and Norway), and we were overwhelmed by what a wonderful place it seemed to be. This analysis of the Danish idea of happiness might exlain it: we sometimes describe ourselves as hobbits, who like a little adventure but mostly are happy to be at home with our good food and our friends and our gardens.
That could also be a part of it.
That’s definitely a part of it.
And see, it doesn’t sound depressing to me at all–it’s how I want to live my life.
Daniel
What is it you dislike about the weather? You’re about the same latitude as me, and I’m guessing you’re a bit colder in winter and a bit warmer in summer, but not extreme either way. Certainly many US dopers have much more extreme weather. Is it the short winter days and unrelenting grayness? Don’t you find the glorious summer nights make up for a hell of a lot? Just curious.
Link to the article, for anyone who is interested.
Sounds pretty much like what I want out of life. I’m not a competitive person- never have been. And I don’t like BMW’s, ever since a near miss with a jerk driving one a few years ago. I don’t really get status symbols, either- I buy clothes because they’re comfortable or nice-looking, and buy a car for good gas mileage, easy parking, and ability to find it in a parking lot.
I would attribute my non-competitive nature and lack of desire for status symbols to my Scandinavian (specifically Swedish) heritage, but my mother is more Scandinavian than I am (3/4 to my 3/8), and she’s competitive, so there goes that theory.
I do wish that Denmark had better weather than it does, and I’ve got a possible solution to that. I like visiting Europe, and I like living in California, but I don’t like the long flying times between them. I propose we saw Europe and Asia apart, and move Europe into the Pacific Ocean at a lower latitude than where it currently is. That should make the climate better, and there’s a fair bit of room out there in the Pacific to fit Europe into.
Merkwurdigliebe, you are pretty much spot on.
Some speculation about why girls are so pretty here:
The gene pool is heavy on the tall and blonde genes. Most people like that. (I don’t though.)
Among caucasians, I think the Danish girls are rather fit. This might be related to the fact that a career is not all that important, or difficult to obtain, so they have good time to spend on jogging and stuff. Also, they don’t eat much fast food. Partly because it’s somewhat expensive, and partly because it is frowned upon.
There also is something else, a facial beauty factor. For instance, the average German girl is not as good looking, even among the slim, blond ones.
Most people here will probably take offense to some of that stuff, but it is really true…Although i really do disagree with the career part. I’d attribute the slimness to the fact that everyone gets, at the bare minimum, 15 mins of exercise a day on a bike. Yes this seems like very little but add up the calories and it’s something like 3500 calories. This is only a very short commute.
And I’ve often heard that one reason why the Scandinavian girls were so pretty is that the original vikings preferred to take home the beautiful blond girls after a good pillage. This really has no scientific value, but it is a sensible explanation.
As to what makes the Danish winter awful? I don’t know where you live in Scotland, but the problem with winter here isn’t the coldness. It isn’t cold at all now. It’s the lack of sunlight. Every day is gray. Add to that the very few hours of sunlight we get, then it’s quite miserable. Maybe you get clearer skies in Scotland? I come from the southern part of America, so our winter days (beginning in January) can be cold (or colder) yet there is usually much more light. I’d imagine that you’d get a blue sky once every 2.5 weeks. This is counting just a portion of the day too. Any day you see the blue sky is a good day here!
He’s taken, dear. If he and his lady ever split, the line is several hundred miles long.
Yep. My classmates from pre-K to college were “mates”. We worked together without anybody telling us to do so. In college, if there was an exercise you couldn’t solve on your own, you’d go to class and ask who’d solved it; once we sent two classmates “in delegation” to see the prof because there was an exercise from an old exam that the 79 of us working together couldn’t solve. I can tell you which two of my classmates probably had the highest GPA, but I don’t know which of the two actually did; I can also name 5 others who probably weren’t very far. But when I applied for graduate school in the States and got asked things like whether I was in the top 10% of my class I had to think reeeal, real hard. It’s not anything I’d ever cared about, plus there’s several ways to define that top 10% (mine wasn’t the highest GPA but I finished in one year less than the rest of my class).
My students in the States had to work in pairs and didn’t know how to do it… I still find it kind of stunning. For me collaboration is something you do without thinking and competition is very tiresome; my most dangerous competitor is myself and the most agressive people I’ve run into tend to be petty idiots; often, the kind of people I could run to the ground with a swap but must refrain from doing so because it would get me into more trouble than it’s worth.
Having to be number one the whole time, ugh.
They’re happy now and I imagine when they were looting, pillaging and raping they were just as happy.
Heck I would be…'specially if I was on the raping detail 
Happy? Denmark? That just doesn’t gibe.
Denmark is a sullen, grey, depressive place in which larger, and possibly supernatural forces, misunderstood though they may be, collaborate to create an oppressive milieu in which one sees ghosts and tries to kill his uncle, or so I’ve heard.
Aren’t you confusing it with Belgium?
You are right again Merkwurdig.
Also, the constant semi-raining is rather annoying.
May I ask what you do here in Denmark, and how come you moved here?