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INSIDE DENMARK

Inside Denmark: Desperation over student housing and Denmark’s Olympic hopes

International and Danish students face worsening housing issues, Denmark is all set for the Olympics and the rain shows no sign of letting up. Our weekly column Inside Denmark takes a look at what the country has been talking about this week.

Published: 27 July 2024 10:45 CEST
Inside Denmark: Desperation over student housing and Denmark’s Olympic hopes
Members of the Danish men's handball team taking a stroll around the Olympic village. Photo: Mads Claus Rasmussen/Ritzau Scanpix

University admissions highlight Denmark’s student housing problem 

It’s that time of year when excited students across Denmark find out whether they have been accepted to study their dream degrees. That’s because the result of so-called ‘quota 1’ (kvote 1) applications, which are based on school grades, are announced at the end of July.

For the most part, students have good chances of making it onto the courses they’ve set their sights on, if the numbers are anything to go by.

Over 60,000 applications were accepted this year while around 9,000 ‘qualified’ applicants – meaning people whose grades were good enough but who lost out because of the number of places available – missed out.

READ ALSO: Copenhagen’s students face dire lack of options due to housing shortage

Most ‘fresher’ or ‘freshman’ students (neither of these terms are really used in Denmark) therefore have cause for celebration, but they now face the daunting task of finding affordable accommodation in their new city.

In Copenhagen in particular, there’s a real dearth of affordable student housing. This forces a lot of students on to the much more expensive private rental market.

International students – already at the disadvantage of navigating a new country and system – can be pushed so far on to the fringes of the rental market that they end up living at informal tenancies and registering their addresses elsewhere, putting themselves in a vulnerable legal grey area.

We explored the issue this week in this investigative article.

Denmark opens pavilion in Paris, athletes head to Olympics

Denmark is marking its participation in the Olympic Games with a special Denmark Pavilion which, according to Danish tourist board Visit Denmark, will highlight “Denmark’s renowned quality of life, offering visitors a firsthand experience of these wonders that define Danish living”.

Officially opened on Thursday by King Frederik and Queen Mary at its location by the Maison du Danemark just off the Champs-Elysées, the pavilion will be open from the day the games officially opens, Friday July 26th, until August 11th. It’s free to visit.

What of Denmark’s chances for medals in the games themselves?

If you want to see Denmark taking medals, your best bet might be to follow the handball, where the multi world-championship-winning men’s team will be going all-out. Star player Mikkel Hansen will be playing his last games before retirement.

If handball’s not your cup of tea, Viktor Axelsen will be one of the frontrunners in the badminton. Track and field will see leading Danish sprinter Ida Karstoft line up as a hopeful in the 200 metres, after recovering from an achilles tendon injury just in time to make the games. Karstoft has a 2022 European Championships bronze medal at the distance.

In the tennis, both Caroline Wozniacki and Clara Tauson have a shot at glory in Danish colours. One high-profile Dane who will not be taking part is male player Holger Rune, who said on Wednesday that a wrist injury had forced him to withdraw from the Games.

Likewise, two-time Tour de France winner Jonas Vingegaard will not be involved in the cycling. Vingegaard suffered a serious crash earlier this year from which he recovered to take second place in this year’s Tour but was not selected for the Olympic team. Olympic cycling events tend to favour sprinters rather than climbing specialists like Vingegaard.

READ ALSO: How to watch the Paris 2024 Olympics on TV in Denmark

‘Wettest ever’ last 12 months

The wet weather has been a news topic twice this week. After national met office DMI this week said the last 12 calendar months have been the wettest ever recorded, Vejle and Vejen then passed their expected annual rainfall totals – before the end of July.

Has this summer been a total washout? That probably depends on your perspective.

We asked our readers across Denmark whether they’d had enough of the drizzle, but the answers were far from unanimous.

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INSIDE DENMARK

Inside Denmark: Famous face back on bank notes and equality ministry moving again

Denmark's new bank notes will see the return of a very famous figure, a former minister for equality calls her old job's changing faces 'embarrassing', and IKEA leaves customers in the red. Our weekly column Inside Denmark takes a look at what we've been talking about in Denmark this week.

Published: 7 September 2024 10:50 CEST
Inside Denmark: Famous face back on bank notes and equality ministry moving again

Hans Christian Andersen returns to Danish bank notes

Denmark’s bank notes have had various themes over the decades, but it’s been a while since they featured the country’s most famous historical figure (from a foreign viewpoint, at least), Hans Christian Andersen.

H.C. Andersen, as he is known to Danes, will appear on a new series of bank notes to be launched in 2028, at which time all previous design issues prior to the current set from 2009 will go out of commission.

That means all older notes will no longer be legal tender, including the 1954-issue 10-krone note which was the last to feature the popular children’s author. 

Outdated notes have been allowed up to now under cash laws, although shop assistants would probably have to spend a bit of time verifying the rarer ones. But that is to change because the old notes – apart from the 2009 set – are now too easy to counterfeit, the central bank, Nationalbanken, has said.

READ ALSO: Expiring Danish banknotes worth ‘billions’ still in circulation

Other famous figures to appear on the new notes will include astronomer Tycho Brahe, seismologist Inge Lehmann and Greenland expeditionist Arnarulunnguaq. The list was released by the Nationalbank this week.

Denmark’s monarchs do not appear on the country’s banknotes, so there’s no switchover from Queen Margrethe to King Frederik X. In fact, recent series of notes have not featured people at all: the 2009 range going instead with bridges and archaeological discoveries.

In 1972, artist Jens Juel was commissioned to produce portraits for the notes of that era. Interestingly, Juel placed himself among noteworthy Danes of the time, putting a self-portrait on the 100-krone.

Should you be interested, you can view all the banknotes of Denmark’s past here.

How much do Danish governments care about equality ministry?

The reshuffle announced by the government at the end of last month involved the latest in a long series of major changes for the minister in charge of equality.

As part of the reshuffle, Liberal (Venstre) MP Marie Bjerre, who was Minister for Digitisation and Equality, left that role to take on the newly-created brief as Europe Minister.

Caroline Olsen, of the Moderates became the new digitisation minister, but is not responsible for equality with Bjerre’s former brief now split. Equality has been moved to the environment ministry, which means Environment Minister Magnus Heunicke can now also call himself Minister for Equality.

READ ALSO: 

Denmark’s first-ever equality minister, Jytte Andersen, was appointed to the job in 1999. 

Since then, 16 different ministers have held the post and it has been moved many times, placed under larger ministries including Housing, Social Affairs, Employment, Welfare, Climate and Energy, the Church, Integration, Fishing, Agriculture, and the list goes on.

In broadcaster DR’s political podcast Slotsholmen, the original Minister for Equality called the potted history of the role “embarrassing”.

“I think this is one of the most embarrassing things I have experienced in politics, and I have experienced quite a lot in 28 years,” she said.

“It shows that it is not a prioritised area, and that is the sad thing for equality,” she said.

“Equality is one of [Denmark’s] universal values, especially when we promote ourselves to others, and then we treat the issue of equality the way we do. I don’t think that really works,” she said.

The ex-minister argued that most of the major legislation implemented by Denmark on equality over the years can actually be traced to EU directives.

She said that, were it up to her, equality would be a fixed part of the Employment Ministry.

IKEA customers wrongly charged thousands of kroner

More than 2000 IKEA customers in Denmark have had up to thousands of kroner withdrawn from their accounts – regardless of whether they have bought anything.

A “human error” in IKEA’s IT systems has resulted in the customers being overcharged, the company’s director of communications Christian Mouroux told newspaper BT.

The amounts range from a few thousand to up to 60,000 kroner, the media outlet reported this week.

“A group of customers was charged an amount that they should not have been charged, based on a full or partial cancellation of their order,” Mouroux stated.

IKEA has moved to assure customers that arbitrary amounts will not be charged to their accounts in the future.

Mouroux also told BT that “the vast majority” of the affected customers have now had their money refunded, and that IKEA is working to process the remaining refunds.

IKEA’s stores in Denmark get 9.3 million visits annually, along with 46.9 million visits to its website and app.

Denmark’s six IKEA stores are located in Taastrup, Gentofte, Copenhagen, Odense, Aarhus, and Aalborg.

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