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LIVING IN DENMARK

Five ways to make a good impression at a Danish home

If you get invited to a Danish home for the first time, there are a few small ways you can leave a positive impression.

Published: 15 October 2020 18:14 CEST
Updated: 20 August 2023 08:42 CEST
Five ways to make a good impression at a Danish home
Photo: Jonas Allert on Unsplash

Although house invitations have been a little sparser, that’s probably the more reason to make the most of them when the opportunity comes along.

Besides, once Denmark (and everywhere else) gets to the other side of the Covid-19 pandemic, it will feel nice to be as considerate as possible on the many social occasions that will hopefully come our way.

Here are few small ways you can make a good impression as a Danish house guest.

Get there on time

Whether it’s a birthday celebration, konfirmation, Easter lunch, family get together or university reunion, Danes tend to arrive punctually. This is not the case in all cultures, so it’s worth aiming for the exact time you’ve been told the occasion starts, rather than interpreting too much leeway.

If you arrive ten minutes too early or too late you should be fine, but anything more than that will probably need some degree of declaring undskyld (sorry) to smooth over any awkwardness.

Bring a gift?

This one doesn’t apply to all occasions, but if it’s a birthday, for example, you should bring a present – just showing up is not considered a gift in and of itself.

The present doesn’t have to be expensive or a huge gesture – feel free to judge this on the nature of your relationship to the person who is being celebrated. But by bringing a gift – no matter how token – you are effectively thanking them for inviting you.

If you’re going to a more general gathering that is not a celebration of a particular person, you don’t need to worry so much about a present.

Eye contact

When glasses are raised and it’s time to say skål (cheers), do your best to look into everyone’s eyes, one person at a time. Making eye contact when toasting is an important way to be polite and show engagement with the situation.

Thank them for the food

The phrase tak for mad (literally, ‘thanks for the food’) is ubiquitous at the end of all Danish mealtimes, whether mundane or celebratory. But if you’re a guest at someone’s house for the first time, thanking them for the food is essential if you want to come across as thoughtful and polite.

Make sure you wait until everyone has completely finished eating before you say thanks. If you say it too soon, and people are still drinking their coffee or finishing their cake, it might seem like you’re in a hurry to get away. If you say tak for mad at the beginning of the meal, everyone will just think you’re a bit strange (I did this once having been brought up to say thanks as soon as food is served). Saying tak for mad is only appropriate once everyone is finished and about to leave the table.

If this seems like a tricky etiquette to follow, don’t worry – everyone is going to say tak for mad at some point, so you can just wait until someone else sets off the chorus and then join in.

Offer to help with the dishes

Danish culture is quite egalitarian and there’s no harm in asking the host if you can help with the dishes or where you should take your plates once the meal is done.

You might notice other guests take their dirty crockery and silverware out to the kitchen with them as they leave the table – if so, feel free to follow their example.

Although your offer to help with the dishes will likely be turned down, it will probably be appreciated and you certainly won’t be imposing.

Did you find these tips useful? Did we miss any? Are there any similar topics you’d like to hear about? Let us know.

READ ALSO: Here’s what I learned after two years living like a Dane

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FAMILY

‘Latte-far’? Taking a month off work on Danish parental leave

The Local Denmark editor Michael Barrett took four weeks off his regular job to look after his youngest child during the month leading up to her first birthday.

Published: 3 June 2024 14:54 CEST
'Latte-far'? Taking a month off work on Danish parental leave

I sat sipping an Americano outside what you might describe as a ‘gourmet bakery’ in my local Danish town as my little daughter, age 11-and-a-half months, sat opposite me in one of the café’s wooden child seats, which I’d carried outside while waiting for the coffee.

She drank one of the child-friendly fruit smoothies (organic) that you can get in supermarkets for around 7 kroner, babbling away de-de-de-de as she usually does when she sees something new. The café staff couldn’t tell her off for consuming food not purchased on the premises, by the way, because I was also sharing my croissant with her.

Being on parental leave in the twelfth month since birth feels like a cushy job compared to the tough early stages when she slept restlessly at night, had mild colic when awake and was tricky to put down for a nap.

Those fragile days – and the rest of the first eleven months of her life – were all spent in the near-constant company of her mother, who has gone back to work after almost a year off, every last day of her parental and maternity leave now used up.

Danish laws ensure parents can take 48 weeks of leave after their child is born, but because the rules “earmark” a certain amount of parental leave to each parent, the father or co-mother will often take on some of the baby’s primary care in the first year.

A law which was introduced in 2022 guarantees each parent 11 weeks of “earmarked” or non-transferable leave with their newborn child. For fathers and co-mothers, this is 9 weeks more than the earmarked leave under earlier rules (there are also different rules for varying personal circumstances, such as single parents or students).

READ ALSO:

I don’t know whether we’d have chosen to do things this way if we’d had the option of just giving all the parental leave to Mum. Critics of the added parental leave earmarking say it takes choice away from families. Supporters say it promotes equality and more involvement from fathers.

From a personal perspective, we were in a good position because our daughter was ready to switch – she was eating solids and sleeping well enough for me to take over relatively smoothly from her mum. It might not be like this for everyone.

So what did I do during this month ‘off’ work? Did it really transform me into an artisan coffee-sipping man of leisure? Did it change anything about me at all and more importantly, did it benefit the little one?

In Sweden, the term lattepappa is used to describe certain types of dad on parental leave.

While this can be an expression used to describe men who spend their parental leave walking about town with their stroller and a cup of coffee, there can be further connotations.

In an article from 2005, around the time the phenomenon first appeared, Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet’s Terri Herrera Eriksson, wrote “A lattepappa is not a term for a parent who prefers a certain kind of coffee, but a term to describe a whole lifestyle. He is often on parental leave for a long time, but spends a good portion of that time developing his style and himself.”

Aware that parental leave provisions in Denmark are among the world’s best, giving me a paid-up month off my regular job with The Local, I did see some potential for this kind of thing at the beginning of the month. I set my sights on the interval during the middle of the day when the baby takes her nap.

I could start writing some fiction again, I thought, a pre-children hobby that has long since fallen by the wayside.

READ ALSO: What parental benefits are you entitled to as a freelancer in Denmark?

Reality hit and these lofty ambitions weren’t fulfilled but I did discover that I could keep up my training for an upcoming half-marathon by taking my daughter out in the baby jogger just ahead of nap time. As soon as the three-wheeler started swaying gently, she’d drift off and usually sleep for at least an hour, by which time I had finished running.

This had a couple of obvious benefits: it gave her a stable nap routine while freeing up time to spend with the rest of the family in the mornings or evenings.

My newfound efficiency was also at the back of my mind when, after finishing a shop at a local Føtex supermarket, I found myself drawn into the adjoining Starbucks where I bought a coffee and handed one of the smoothies I’d just bought to my daughter. She looked around the template Starbucks interior as if it had all the mesmerising wonder of the Chocolate Room from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (the Gene Wilder version).

The following day I upped my game by heading to the café described at the start of this article, but these were in fact the only two occasions I visited a café during my month’s leave (and I had black coffee for the record, not latte).

The rest of the time was spent washing clothes, emptying the dishwasher, picking up our older child from kindergarten and other stuff that is both unsurprising and uninteresting to read about.

Danish doesn’t really have a term that mirrors Sweden’s lattepappa but most Danes would probably recognise it, given the comparable parental leave provisions the two countries have. In the Danish language it would be the more mundane-sounding lattefar or “latte-father”.

This non-existent word makes some sense to me because it feels like the last month has revolved around practical jobs and everyday tasks but has also given me time to do things I enjoy (with a bit of creativity) and, best of all, form a closer bond with my daughter, who makes me laugh and smile constantly.

If the above counts as a latte-dad “developing his style and himself”, we can probably say the Danish parental leave rules worked well in my personal case.

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