The Year of Living Danishly (30 page)

‘
Too bloody right
,' I mutter, then: ‘Do you want to walk the dog or are you too busy playing with toys?'

‘It's not “playing”, it's “
building
”!'

This isn't the first time he's tried to convince me of the crucial difference, apparently acknowledged by AFOLs everywhere. ‘Anyway, it's for grown-ups. See?' He points at the twelve-plus age-guidance banner on the box with pride. ‘It's even called “
Lego Architecture
”.
Kids
don't even
know
what architecture is.' I detect a distinct eye roll before he gets back to his ‘build'.

I watch him, a blonde head of hair bent over, squinting behind his black-rimmed square glasses, sitting in his Arne Jacobsen chair, outlined by the gentle glow of a Poul Henningsen PH lamp. He's playing an album by the Danish pop group Alphabeats on his Danish Bang & Olufsen stereo, humming along out of tune and occasionally sipping from a Danish Bodum double-wall insulated beer glass that has appeared by his side. Yes that's right, we've acclimatised so much that a Carlsberg at 5pm in winter is a perfectly normal Tuesday treat. I've never seen Lego Man look more at home.

‘Look who drank the Danish Kool Aid…' I mutter, wondering whether I should pin him down and swab his cheek to test for the 5-HTT gene.
Maybe our child will be part-Viking and have the happy gene too
, I think.
Maybe that's why our (80 per cent likely) son never sleeps and is such a kicker: he's already marauding around inside me, all high on serotonin and the anticipation of
snegles.

Lego Man, I can tell, wants to stay. But I'm still not
totally
convinced. Maybe you can take the girl out of the British cynicism but you can't take the British cynicism out of the girl. Maybe…

Things I've learned this month:

1. Danes don't mind paying their ludicrously high taxes
   
2. …because money can't buy you happiness anyway
   
3. What can make you happy is being more trusting and living Danishly (hurrah!)
   
4. Lego Man may be a secret Viking
   

13. Christmas

God Jul!

There's something else I should probably mention. I haven't forgotten – it's not as though Scandis are so ice-cool that they keep it all on the down low. No, Christmas here is A Huge Deal. And it starts at 8.57pm on the first Friday of November.

Lego Man and I are just finishing off a quiet dinner in The Big Town when an almighty roar starts up from the street. We look out of the window, curious now, only to see a few youths hanging around the porny pony and cats with boobs fountain. This is standard and all is as it should be with the world. A few moments later, a second cry can be heard. It echoes along the street, gathering momentum as other shouts and shrieks join it until there's an unmistakable sense that Something Is Going To Happen. In a place where very little ever happens.

The sound of an engine can be heard and a truck rolls into view, complete with sound system and a countdown clock. The vehicle begins emitting a strange white substance. Great gouts of the stuff are expelled into the air, floating slowly downwards and smothering the street like a blanket.

‘Ahhh … snow!' Lego Man exclaims with glee. It's been at least two days since we've had fresh snowfall and Lego Man is excited at the prospect of breaking out yet more recently acquired technical outdoor gear. But for once, it's not actually snowing. This white stuff is something else entirely.

‘I think…' I start, before blinking and looking again, just to be sure, ‘I think it's
foam
.' I didn't spend two weeks in the Costa de Sol as an impressionable teenager for nothing: I know professional-grade bubbles when I see them. Nonetheless, the place suddenly looks incredibly festive and after paying, we take to the streets to investigate.

The lorry comes to a standstill and the tailgate lowers to reveal a gang of girls in small blue outfits and men dressed in boiler suits congregating around a diminutive, dark-haired man. He's sporting a mega-watt smile and aviator sunglasses, despite the fact that it's been dark since 3.30pm.

‘Is that …
Tom Cruise
?' Lego Man squints at the tiny figure.

I feel very sober indeed and try to break it to him gently: ‘I think it's
supposed
to be…' I'm pretty confident that the world's most famous Scientologist hasn't come to hang out in rural Jutland for the weekend.

The looka(little)like greets fans with a wave and they cheer and whoop while the other
Top Gun
extras hand out flammable-looking blue Santa hats and plastic aviators. Then the womenfolk step forward and we see that they are dressed as air stewardesses. Lego Man is appalled.

‘There are no air hostesses in
Top Gun
! You don't have stewards on a fighter jet! That would be totally
impractical
! Not to mention unnecessary…' His outrage at the factual inaccuracies of the tableau seems to know no bounds, but I can't help feeling there are bigger fish to fry. Maverick and his lady friends are now lobbing glass bottles of beer into the crowd. The assembled throng is becoming larger, louder and less able to stay upright as the foam disintegrates, leaving the street slippery with soap. And yet the scantily clad flight attendants and Denmark's answer to Tom Cruise are
throwing glass missiles
.

I ask a semi-sober-looking woman standing next to me what's going on and she tells me that this is ‘
J-Dag
' or ‘J-Day' when the festive beer,
julebryg
, is traditionally delivered to every town in Denmark by horse and cart. At least, that's what happens in Copenhagen. Here, we get an articulated lorry.

J-Day marks the unofficial start of Christmas in Denmark, when bars and restaurants serve festive beer from 9pm and promotional teams from the brewery dole out a few hundred freebies to get the party started.

‘I should probably try it, since we're here,' says Lego Man, eyeing up the folk around him who are now glugging down their
julebryg
. I'm about to comment on how magnanimous he is, willing to overlook the besmirching of his favourite film for the sake of some free lager, but he's already disappeared into the crowd.

‘Be careful!' I call out, dodging carbonated glass grenades.

He comes back victorious, clutching a bottle above his head like a football trophy.

‘Well done.'

‘Thanks,' he nods, accepting the praise before cracking the bottle open and taking a hearty swig.

‘Well?'

‘It's … strong. Sort of liquorice-y.'

My nose wrinkles involuntarily, ‘God, they put that stuff in everything round here!' A sing-song starts up in Danish, of what sounds like some sort of beer-based anthem to the tune of
Jingle Bells
, while more lager missiles are thrown out. ‘Danes must have excellent hand-eye coordination,' I remark. ‘I haven't heard a single bottle smash.'

‘That, or they really love beer,' replies Lego Man taking another swig. ‘And I'll be honest, it's pretty good. You wouldn't want any to go to waste.'

After Tom Cruise and his team have strewn their stash, the truck rolls out of town and everyone decamps to the nearest bar. We meet up with Helena C and The Viking and the merriment continues. Feeling horrifically sober, I try to imagine that I'm conducting some sort of important indigenous analysis, like a heavily pregnant Bruce Parry in
Tribe
. But it's hard to get the bottom of an anthropological phenomenon when everyone you try to talk to has drunk a lot (and I mean A Lot) and honks of liquorice. So I leave Lego Man to it with the usual suspects after an hour or so and head home.

The next morning, I call on the good people behind J-Day to tell me more.

‘It all started from a TV ad that ran for the first time in 1980,' says Jens (another one!) Bekke from Carlsberg, the company that brews the Tuborg beers, including the
julebryg
. The advert was a rudimentary animation, depicting Santa and Rudolph forgoing their Christmas duties in pursuit of a Tuborg truck to the twinkly sound of ‘Jingle Bells'. The subtext, I discover when I watch the ad on YouTube, seems to be that Santa and his helper are borderline alcoholics. Nevertheless, the commercial drove better than expected sales and so has been screened every winter since. ‘It's probably the only advertisement in the world that hasn't changed in more than 30 years,' says Jens. Neither, apparently, has the beer. The strong 5.6 per cent ABV pilsner was invented by mixing three other beers together and is said to be a good accompaniment to smoked fish, herring, pork, duck … and more
julebryg
. ‘We keep the beer the same every year, as well as the packaging and the TV advert,' Jens tells me, ‘because Danes love tradition!' I mention that I'd noticed this. ‘Plus we'd get protests from all over the country if we changed people's Christmas beer!'

Julebryg
is so popular that despite only being on the market for ten weeks a year, it's Denmark's fourth best-selling beer. In other words, Danes fill their boots.

‘Screening the ad marks the start of the Christmas festivities for many people,' says Jens, ‘and from 1990 onwards, we got the idea to travel around the country handing out
julebryg
to mark the start of its time on sale.' Now, 500 Carlsberg employees visit 500 locations each year for J-Day. At each stop, they sing a bastardisation of
Jingle Bells
with lyrics that translate along the lines of:

‘We also like to have a theme every year for the trucks,' Jens goes on. ‘We've had elves, then last year it was Christmas trees, so this year we went for
Top Gun
.'

I tell him that
Top Gun
doesn't seem terribly Christmassy. ‘No. I'm not entirely sure why we did this. Some people in the creative team came up with it…' He changes tack by telling me that the Carlsberg teams distribute 20,000 bracelets and 45,000 synthetic Santa hats on J-Day as well. These are worn with pride for the remainder of the evening by the assembled hordes, including, one year, by unlikely J-Day reveller Salman Rushdie.

Having fled his home to go into hiding, and with a fatwa issued against him,
The Satanic Verses
author was spotted in a bar in Frederiksberg on J-Day of 1996 wearing a blue and white Tuborg Santa hat. He was papped with a smile on his face and a
julebryg
in front of him, making front-page news around the world the next day. ‘We're not sure his security team were very pleased,' Jens confides in me, ‘but it was great for us!'

I figure that if it's good enough for the Booker of Booker winners, it's probably good enough for Lego Man. I thank Jens for his insights before waking my husband from his liquorice-scented slumber.

‘Good night?' I ask cheerily, opening the blind and letting in the gloom.

He makes a grunting noise that neither confirms nor denies that the rest of the evening was a festive success, though from the fact that he still can't open his eyes at 11am, I'm suspecting it was a large one. I selflessly offer to do a coffee run into town on the condition that he emerges from his pit at some point in the next few hours.

The roads are empty. The whole of Jutland, it seems, is nursing a collective hangover. Even the bakery staff look jaded, and they're used to getting by on a few hours' sleep a night. One of the girls in my choir is a baker and having made Danish pastries my
Mastermind
specialist subject over the past year, I'm now well versed in how my beloved
snegles
are brought into this world. The magical process starts, I've learned, when some poor souls turn up to get the ovens going at 2am.

Pastries and coffees in hand, I step outside to inhale the cold, thin air and dodge street-cleaning machines already at work to tidy up after last night's revelry. The normally spotless streets are strewn with snow-flecked beer bottles, blue Santa hats and muddy tinsel. I hear a crack underfoot and peer over my vast expanse of stomach to see a pair of cracked plastic aviators in a mush of slimy bubbles and soiled foam.

From this point onwards, Christmas is officially deemed to have begun and all shops and local radio stations are contractually obliged to play
Now That's What I Call Christmas
non-stop. Disclaimer: I am a huge fan of the festive season and regularly break out ‘Fairytale of New York' before the start of December, but the Danes embrace Christmas on a whole other level. Lego Man and I take to playing Chris Rea roulette – it being a sure-fire bet that the gravel-voiced crooner's ‘Driving Home for Christmas' will be playing on
at least
three Danish radio stations at any given minute of the day. One very special Friday, it's playing on five of the six stations in range as I drive to the supermarket. Now
that's
what I call Christmas…

For many, Tivoli Gardens is the essence of Christmas and millions flock to Denmark's capital at this time of year to marvel at the twinkly lights, eat traditionally shaped pretzels and pet the reindeer shipped in specially. But in rural Jutland, things are a little less fancy.

‘So, Santa's coming to The Big Town tomorrow,' Helena C tells me casually in mid-November.

‘Ooh, fun, where will he be?' I am aware that as a grown-up I have no business to be quite so keen on Father Christmas, but my year of living Danishly has taught me the importance of letting go and being myself. So now, I'm an out and proud AFOC (adult fan of Christmas).

‘Well,' Helena C goes on, ‘he used to come along the canal, handing out sweets from an old boat, but we had a few issues with kids surging towards open water and falling in. It wasn't great PR for the town. Plus the water is pretty cold at this time of year. So it was agreed that Santa should probably stick to dry land this year.' As I mentioned, health and safety: not so big in Denmark.

This year, Santa arrives by pony, smashes some ‘
slik
' (or sweets) around, then heads to the main square to turn on the lights. Danes insist on decorating their municipal trees to look a lot like gherkins. Not for them the artfully wound-around fairy lights adorning grand public trees throughout the rest of the world at Christmas. In Jutland, at least, someone goes up on a crane to the top of the tree with several strands of bulbs and drops them, vertically, creating a stripy, strangely phallic-looking centrepiece for every town in the region. I ask around as to why this is and find that the Ann Summers personal massager-style tree decoration is another case of ‘
tradition
'. Once the town's tree lights have been turned on, nets of fairy lights get cast over every object that remains stationary for more than a couple of hours in Denmark. Danish homes also get zhuzhed up with an assortment of spangly things and a bewildering array of foraged finds.

Friendly Neighbour is back from Copenhagen for the weekend and appears on our doorstep one Sunday morning with armfuls of what I can only assume is garden waste.

‘For you!' she says, brightly.

‘Er, thanks!' I try to reply equally brightly.

‘Since I'm not going to be here for Christmas I brought you a few leftovers from the forest to decorate your home.'

‘Wow…' I can see lichen, something that looks a lot like a toadstool, and some twigs. ‘Thank you…'

‘You don't do that, back in England? Decorate your house for Christmas with things from nature?'

‘Um,
well
…' I don't know quite how to break it to her that I seem to have mistaken ‘nature' for ‘John Lewis' up until this moment in my life. ‘I think people just tend to
buy
Christmas decorations back home,' I tell her.

‘Well now you are in Denmark! You must use
nature
.' Friendly Neighbour won't be dissuaded so I invite her in for coffee and she gives me the skinny on decorating Danishly. ‘It is quite all right to gather from the forests, but only for your own private use, no more than you can fit in one bag. Of course, you know that there are two kinds of forests?' I did not know this. ‘Ones owned by the Nature Agency and private forests. In Nature Agency forests you can gather from the whole forest floor. In private forests you are only allowed to take what you can reach from the trail. If you find a nice branch or piece of bark, you are allowed to pick it up, unless it is from a fir or spruce tree as these are for forest owners only. Acorn, cones and beechnuts can be gathered when found on the ground only, but mushrooms and lichen you can gather as much as you like.'