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MULTICULTURALISM

OPINION: Why an afternoon at Starbucks shows the best of Danish multiculturalism

Is it really so bad to drink latte at Starbucks? The Local’s guest columnist Laura Maria Kjær argues that we are fortunate to live in a multicultural world – something we have done for longer than many think – and that life would be empty without it.

Published: 3 May 2017 13:35 CEST
OPINION: Why an afternoon at Starbucks shows the best of Danish multiculturalism
Photo: marinv/Depositphotos

In an ordinary Starbucks in Copenhagen, as I sip my latte, I cannot help but notice the everyday display of multiculturalism.

The perfectly adequate coffee is not the reason why people come here. The American franchise, born in Seattle, gives the people of Copenhagen the possibility of partaking in American popular culture. The coffee culture, and especially the kind where you fetch your much-needed coffee on the go, in a terribly stylish paper cup, is relatively new to Denmark, having emerged gradually in the late 1990s. Starbucks itself didn’t make it onto Danish soil until 2007.

But, people love it and whatever coffee shop you enter, the view that greets you is mostly the same: crowds of people taking in the special feeling one finds in a coffee shop.

It’s cosy there. The mellow jazz, the scent of freshly grounded coffee, the tempting odour of croissants, and the snug soft arm chair in the corner that only a few are lucky or quick enough to sit in make the coffee shop a favourite location of many a Copenhagener.

Mostly, I love the coffee shop for the diversity one finds there. To be sure, people come because of the brand, because it allows them to retain a certain hip image, but also because, perhaps to a greater extent than they are aware of, it transports them to a multicultural space.


Starbucks at Copenhagen Airport. Photo: teamtime/Depositphotos

The guests sip their French or Italian born coffee variations made from coffee beans harvested in South America or Africa. They listen to lulling jazz tunes. A waitress calls out an order in Spanish, perhaps for a tourist.

The women next to me speak Serbian, and two friends across me speak in Danish; one has the pale skin and blond hair of a Scandinavian native and the other has the olive skin and brown hair of someone from a warmer climate. In the queue, there’s an Arab couple talking about what they should entertain their children with during the winter break. I know because they are speaking in Danish.

READ ALSO: OPINION: My humbling journey into a surprising Scandinavian life

The girl behind the counter is transgender, only discernible by her completely flat chest. Outside, a black man is enjoying his coffee in solitude and watching people pass by. A couple of Asian youngsters defy all stereotypes and look like something from the 1970s British punk scene, the guy teaches the girl to say “straw” in Danish: “sugerør” which directly translates into “sucking pipe”. They laugh and leave.

I watch these people going about their ordinary lives, and I notice how no one notices the multicultural display. No one passes a second glance at anyone, except perhaps at the woman who stares at them, smiles and then frantically types on her smartphone. No one stops in marvel or bewilderment at the sight of the black man, the Asian youngsters or any of the other people because this is simply another day in their lives.

No one requests Danish grown coffee (mind you, there’s no such thing), no one minds the people around them or the Spanish speaking waitress. No one demands that the jazz is replaced with Carl Nielsen. They don’t because it’s perfectly ordinary to encounter these people and these things out and about.

READ ALSO: Queen Margrethe: Denmark 'not a multicultural country'

It’s the world right here in a Starbucks in Copenhagen. And when they leave they meet the same elements in the street, in the supermarket, at their jobs, at the bars and restaurants and in their homes on TV or on Spotify.

I then begin to picture the view from where I sit without this display of multiculturalism.

First of all, I’d be sitting in the street, because there’d be no Starbucks or alternative coffee shop. I would sit there alone with the pale blond girl. I’d have no coffee to sip. And when I left, I’d have a very limited selection of people, bars, groceries and music and TV to enjoy. There’d be no one to laugh at the obscurity of the word “sucking pipe”. I wouldn’t know about 1970s British punk, I wouldn’t ever have tasted a croissant or heard the mellow tunes of jazz.

I think of this and feel relief and gratitude. I’m grateful for the globalised world, and for the splendour of culture it has brought me. Denmark is a small country, but it could be frighteningly smaller. Luckily, it’s not.

Laura Maria Kjær holds a Master’s degree in English literature from the University of Copenhagen, specialising in postcolonial fiction and multicultural literature. She has previously contributed to Kristeligt Dagblad and Bogligt.dk and can be contacted at [email protected].

 

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OPINION AND ANALYSIS

OPINION: Down with Danish hygge – Sweden’s mys is more real, fun and inclusive

Hygge, the Danish art of getting cosy, has taken the world by storm. But the Swedish equivalent is refreshingly different, says David Crouch 

Published: 20 December 2022 08:41 CET
Updated: 6 August 2023 11:03 CEST
OPINION: Down with Danish hygge - Sweden’s mys is more real, fun and inclusive

It is around seven years since the Danish word hygge entered many of our languages. Hygge, pronounced hue-guh and generally translated as the art of cosiness, exploded almost overnight to become a global lifestyle phenomenon.

Hygge dovetailed with mindfulness and fed into other popular trends such as healthy eating, and even adult colouring books. “The Little Book of Hygge” became a publishing sensation and has been translated into 15 languages. It was swiftly followed by a second book from its author, “My Hygge Home”, one of dozens on the market. 

There is nothing wrong with new ways to relax, and certainly no harm in identifying them with Scandinavia. But as a guide to living your life, there are some problems with hygge. 

First, the original meaning of the word is too broad and subtle to enable a clear grasp of the concept among non-Danes. This probably helps to explain its appeal – hygge is an empty bottle into which you can pour whatever liquid you like.

Patrick Kingsley, who wrote a book about Denmark several years before the hygge hype, was “surprised to hear people describe all sorts of things” as hygge. Danes, he said, would use the word when talking about a bicycle, a table, or even an afternoon stroll. 

So it is hardly surprising that, outside Denmark, hygge is applied rather indiscriminately. Last week the New York Times devoted an entire article to achieving hygge while riding the city’s subway, of all places. “A train, after all, is basically a large sled that travels underground, in the dark,” it said, trying too hard to find a hint of Nordic-ness on the overcrowded railway.

READ ALSO: Danish word of the day – hyggeracisme

Hygge has become an exotic and mysterious word to describe more or less anything you want. It is as if someone decided that the English word “nice” had a magical meaning that contained the secret to true happiness, and then the whole non-English speaking world made great efforts to achieve the perfect feeling of “nice”. 

A second problem with hygge is that, in Denmark itself, it seems to operate like a badge of Danishness that can only be enjoyed by Danes themselves – a kind of cultural border that outsiders cannot cross. You can walk down a Danish street in the dark, one journalist was told, look through the windows and spot who is Danish and who is foreign just by whether their lighting is hygge or not.

When writer Helen Russell spent a year in Denmark, she was intrigued by hygge and asked a lifestyle coach about it. “It’s hard to explain, it’s just something that all Danes know about,” she was told. How could an immigrant to Denmark get properly hygge, Russell asked? “You can’t. It’s impossible,” was the unhelpful reply. It can’t be a coincidence that the far-right Danish Peoples Party has put a clear emphasis on hygge, as if immigration is a threat to hygge and therefore to Danish-ness itself. 

READ ALSO: It’s official – Hygge is now an English word

Outside Denmark, this exclusivity has taken on another aspect: where are all the children? Where amid the hygge hype are the bits of lego on the floor, the mess of discarded clothes, toys and half-eaten food, the bleeping iPads and noisy TVs? “Hygge is about a charmed existence in which children are sinisterly absent,” noted the design critic for the Financial Times. It’s as if the Pied Piper of hygge has spirited them away so you can get truly cosy. 

But there is a bigger problem with hygge. It is largely an invention, the work of some clever marketing executives. After spotting a feature about hygge on the BBC website, two of London’s biggest publishers realised this was “a perfect distillation of popular lifestyle obsessions”. They set out to find people who could write books for them on the subject, and so two bestsellers were born, spawning a host of imitations. 

Sweden has a different word that means roughly the same thing: mys (the noun) and mysig (the adjective). There have even been some half-hearted attempts to sell mys to a foreign audience in the same way as hygge. But the real meaning of mys in Swedish society is rather different, it seems to me. The reason for this, I think, is that mys has become so firmly identified with Friday nights, or fredagsmys – the “Friday cosy”. 

Fredagsmys is a collective sigh of relief that the working / school week is over, and now it is time for the whole family to come together in front of some trashy TV with a plate of easy finger-food. The word first appeared in the 1990s, entered the dictionary in 2006, and became a semi-official national anthem three years later with this joyous ad for potato crisps:

In this portrayal, mys is radically different to hygge. It is a celebration of the ordinary, witty and multi-cultural, featuring green-haired goths and a mixed-race family with small children. Food is central to fredagsmys, and what is the typical food of choice? Mexican, of course! Not a herring in sight.

Why Mexican? It seems nobody is really sure, but tacofredag now has roots in Swedish society. Tacos, tortillas, and all the accompanying spices and sauces take up a whole aisle of the typical Swedish supermarket. Swedes are accustomed to eating bread with various bits and pieces on top, according to a specialist in Swedish food culture, while the Swedish tradition of smörgåsbord (open sandwiches) makes a buffet meal seem natural. The fussiness of tacos is even reminiscent of a kräftskiva crayfish party.

There is no cultural exclusivity here. On the contrary, fredagsmys food could equally be Italian, North American, Middle-Eastern, British or French. And children are absolutely central to a good Friday cosy. 

With Swedish mys, everybody is welcome. Get cosy and relax, but do it by mixing and getting messy, rather than retreating into pure, perfect, rarified isolation. There is a time and a place for hygge. But the Swedish version is more real, more fun, and more inclusive.

David Crouch is the author of Almost Perfekt: How Sweden Works and What Can We Learn From It. He is a freelance journalist and a lecturer in journalism at Gothenburg University.

 
 
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