The Year of Living Danishly

It all started simply enough. After a few days off work my husband and I were suffering from post-holiday blues and struggling to get back into the swing of things. A grey drizzle had descended on London and the city looked grubby and felt somehow worn out â as did I. âThere has to be more to life than thisâ¦' was the taunt that ran through my head as I took the tube to the office every day, then navigated my way home through chicken bone-strewn streets twelve hours later, before putting in a couple of hours of extra work or going to events for my job. As a journalist on a glossy magazine, I felt like a fraud. I spent my days writing about how readers could âhave it all': a healthy work-life balance, success, sanity, sobriety â all while sporting the latest styles and a radiant glow. In reality, I was still paying off student loans, relying on industrial quantities of caffeine to get through the day and self-medicating with Sauvignon Blanc to get myself to sleep.

Sunday evenings had become characterised by a familiar tightening in my chest at the prospect of the week ahead, and it was getting harder and harder to keep from hitting the snooze button several times each morning. I had a job I'd worked hard for in an industry I'd been toiling in for more than a decade. But once I got the role I'd been striving towards, I realised I wasn't actually any happier â just busier. What I aspired to had become a moving target. Even when I reached it, there'd be something else I thought was âmissing'. The list of things I thought I wanted, or needed, or
should
be doing, was inexhaustible. I, on the other hand, was permanently exhausted. Life felt scattered and fragmented. I was always trying to do too many things at once and always felt as though I was falling behind.

I was 33 â the same age Jesus got to, only by this point he'd supposedly walked on water, cured lepers and resurrected the dead. At the very least he'd inspired a few followers, cursed a fig tree, and done something pretty whizzy with wine at a wedding. But me? I had a job. And a flat. And a husband and nice friends. And a new dog â a mutt of indeterminate breeding that we'd hoped might bring a bucolic balance to our hectic urban lives. So life was OK. Well, apart from the headaches, the intermittent insomnia, the on/off tonsillitis that hadn't shifted despite months of antibiotics and the colds I seemed to come down with every other week. But that was normal, right?

I'd thrived on the adrenaline of city life in the past, and the bright, buzzy team I worked with meant that there was never a dull moment. I had a full social calendar and a support network of friends I loved dearly, and I lived in one of the most exciting places in the world. But after twelve years at full pelt in the country's capital and the second stabbing in my North London neighbourhood in as many months, I suddenly felt broken.

There was something else, too. For two years, I had been poked, prodded and injected with hormones daily only to have my heart broken each month. We'd been trying for a baby, but it just wasn't working. Now, my stomach churned every time a card and a collection went round the office for some colleague or other off on maternity leave. There are only so many Baby Gap romper suits you can coo over when it's all you've wanted for years â all your thrice-weekly hospital appointments have been aiming for. People had started to joke that I should âhurry up', that I wasn't â
that
young any more' and didn't want to âmiss the boat'. I would smile so hard that my jaw would ache, while trying to resist the urge to punch them in the face and shout: âBugger off!' I'd resigned myself to a future of IVF appointments fitted in around work, then working even
more
in what spare time I had to keep up. I had to keep going, to stop myself from thinking too much and to maintain the lifestyle I thought I wanted. That I thought we needed. My other half was also feeling the strain and would come home furious with the world most nights. He'd rant about bad drivers or the rush-hour traffic he'd endured on his 90-minute commute to and from work, before collapsing on the sofa and falling into a
Top Gear
/trash TV coma until bed.

My husband is a serious-looking blond chap with a hint of the physics teacher about him who once auditioned to be the Milky Bar kid. He didn't have a TV growing up so wasn't entirely sure what a Milky Bar
was
, but his parents had seen an ad in the
Guardian
and thought it sounded wholesome. Another albino-esque child got the part in the end, but he remembers the day fondly as the first time he got to play with a handheld Nintendo that another hopeful had brought along. He also got to eat as much chocolate as he liked â something else not normally allowed. His parents eschewed many such new-fangled gadgets and foodstuffs, bestowing on him instead a childhood of classical music, museum visits and long, bracing walks. I can only begin to imagine their disappointment when, aged eight, he announced that his favourite book was the Argos catalogue; a weighty tome that he would sit with happily for hours on end, circling various consumer electronics and Lego sets he wanted. This should have been an early indicator of what was in store.

He came along at a time in my life when I had just about given up hope. 2008, to be exact. My previous boyfriend had dumped me at a wedding (really), and the last date I'd been on was with a man who'd invited me round for dinner before getting caught up watching football on TV and so forgetting to buy any food. He said he'd order me a Dominos pizza instead. I told him not to bother. So when I met my husband-to-be and he offered to cook, I wasn't expecting much. But supper went surprisingly well. He was clever and funny and kind and there were
ramekins
involved. My mother, when I informed her of this last fact, was very impressed. âThat's the sign of a very well brought up young man,' she told me, âto own a set of ramekins. Let alone to know what to do with them!'

I married him three years later. Mostly because he made me laugh, ate my experimental cooking and didn't complain when I mineswept the house for sweets. He could also be incredibly irritating â losing keys, wallet, phone or all of the above on a daily basis, and having an apparent inability to arrive anywhere on time and an infuriating habit of spending half an hour in the loo (âare you
redecorating
in there?'). But we were all right. We had a life together. And despite the hospital visits and low-level despair/exhaustion/viruses/financial worries at the end of each month (due to having spent too much at the
start
of each month), we loved each other.

I'd imagined a life for us where we'd probably move out of London in a few years' time, work, see friends, go on holidays, then retire. I envisaged seeing out my days as the British version of Jessica Fletcher from
Murder She Wrote
: writing and solving sanitised crime, followed by a nice cup of tea and a laugh-to-credits ending. My fantasy retirement was going to rock. But when I shared this vision with my husband, he didn't seem too keen. âThat's it?' was his response. âEveryone does that!'

âWere you not
listening
,' I tried again, âto the part about Jessica Fletcher?'

He began to imply that
Murder She Wrote
was a work of fiction, to which I scoffed and said that next he'd be telling me that unicorns weren't real. Then he stopped me in my tracks by announcing that he really wanted to live overseas someday.

â“Overseas”?' I checked I'd got this bit right: âAs in, “not in this country”? Not near
our
seas?'

âYes.'

âOh.'

I'm not someone who relishes adventure, having had more than my fair share of it growing up and in my twenties. Nowadays, I crave stability. When the prospect of doing anything daring is dangled in front of me, I have a tendency to weld myself to my comfort zone. I'm even scared of going off piste on a menu. But my husband, it seemed, wanted more. This frightened me, making me worry that I wasn't âenough' for him, and the seed of doubt was planted. Then one wet Wednesday evening, he told me he'd been approached about a new job. In a whole other country.

âWhat? When did this happen?' I demanded, suspicious that he'd been applying for things on the sly.

âJust this morning,' he said, showing me an email that had indeed come out of the blue earlier that day, getting in touch and asking whether he'd be interested in relocating â¦ to Denmark. The country of pastries, bacon, strong fictional females and my husband's favourite childhood toy. And it was the makers of the small plastic bricks who were in search of my husband's services.

â
Lego
?' I asked, incredulous as I read the correspondence. âYou want us to move to Denmark so you can work for Lego?' Was he kidding me? Were we in some screwed-up sequel to that Tom Hanks film where grown-ups get their childhood wishes granted? What next? Would Sylvanian Families appoint me their woodland queen? Were My Little Pony about to DM me inviting me to become their equine overlord? âHow on earth has this happened? And was there a genie or a malfunctioning fairground machine involved?'

My husband shook his head and told me that he didn't know anything about it until today â that a recruitment agent he'd been in touch with ages ago must have put him forward. That it wasn't something he actively went looking for but now it was here, well, he hoped we could at least consider it.

âPlease?' he begged. âFor me? I'd do it for you. And we could move for your job next time,' he promised.

I didn't think that this was an entirely fair exchange: he knew full well that I'd happily stay put forever in a nice little town just outside the M25 to execute Project Jessica Fletcher. Denmark had never been a part of my plan. But this was something that he really wanted. It became our sole topic of conversation outside work over the next week and the more we talked about it, the more I understood what this meant to him and how much it mattered. If I denied him this now, a year into our marriage, how would that play out in future? Did I really want it to be one of the things we regretted? Or worse, that he resented me for? I loved him. So I agreed to think about it.

We went to Denmark on a recce one weekend and visited Legoland. We laughed at how slowly everyone drove and spluttered at how much a simple sandwich cost. There were some clear attractions: the place was clean, the Danish pastries surpassed expectations, and the scenery, though not on the scale of the more dramatic Norwegian fjords, was soul-lifting.

While we were there, a sense of new possibilities started to unfurl. We caught a glimpse of a different way of life and noticed that the people we met out there weren't like folks back home. Aside from the fact that they were all strapping Vikings, towering over my 5â²3â³ frame and my husband's 5â²11â³-on-a-good-day stature, the Danes we met didn't
look
like us. They looked relaxed. They walked more slowly. They took their time, stopping to take in their surroundings. Or just to breathe.

Then we came home, back to the daily grind. And despite my best efforts, I couldn't get the idea out of my head, like a good crime plot unravelling clue by clue. The notion that we could make a change in the way we lived sparked unrest, where previously there'd been a stoic acceptance. Project Jessica Fletcher suddenly seemed a long way off, and I wasn't sure I could keep going at the same pace for another 30 years. It also occurred to me that wishing away half your life in anticipation of retirement (albeit an awesome one) was verging on the medieval. I wasn't a serf, tilling the land until I dropped from exhaustion. I was working in 21st century London. Life should have been good. Enjoyable. Easy, even. So the fact that I was dreaming of retirement at the age of 33 was probably an indicator that something had to change.

I couldn't remember the last time I'd been relaxed. Properly relaxed, without the aid of over-the-counter sleeping tablets or alcohol.
If we moved to Denmark,
I daydreamed,
we might be able to get better at this ânot being so stressed all the time' thing
â¦
We could live by the sea. We could walk our dog on the beach every day. We wouldn't have to take the tube anymore. There wouldn't even be a tube where we'd be moving to.

After our weekend of âother life' possibilities, we were faced with a choice. We could stick with what we knew, or we could take action, before life became etched on our foreheads. If we were ever going to try to lead a more fulfilling existence, we had to start doing things differently. Now.

My husband, a huge Scandophile, was already sold on Denmark. But being more cautious by nature, I still needed time to think. As journalist, I needed to do my research.

Other than Sarah Lund's Faroe Isle jumpers, Birgitte Nyborg's bun and
Borgen
creator Adam Price's knack of making coalition politics palatable for prime time TV, I knew very little about Denmark. The Nordic noir I'd watched had taught me two things: that the country was doused in perpetual rain and people got killed a lot. But apparently it was also a popular tourist destination, with official figures from Visit Denmark showing that numbers were up 26 per cent. I learned too that the tiny Scandi-land punched above its weight commercially, with exports including Carlsberg (probably the best lager in the world), Arla (the world's seventh biggest dairy company and the makers of Lurpak), Danish Crown (where most of the UK's bacon comes from) and of course Lego â the world's largest toymaker. Not bad for a country with a population of 5.5 million (about the size of South London).

âFive and a half million!' I guffawed when I read this part. I was alone in the flat with just the dog for company, but he was doing his best to join in the conversation by snorting with incredulity. Or it might have been a sneeze. âDoes five and a half million even
qualify
as a country?' I asked the dog. âIsn't that just a big town? Do they really even
need
their own language?' The dog slunk off as though this question was beneath him, but I carried on unperturbed.

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