Danes and Stereotypes: The superficial American and the Copenhagen cheater

Hello and welcome to the How to Live in Denmark podcast. I'm Kay Xander Mellish, and before I get started, I want to say I'm looking forward to seeing I look forward to seeing you this Thursday, March 13th, at the Gentofte Main Library for our first How to Live in Denmark live event. I don't date much these days. I'm a single mother with a full-time job and a weekly podcast. But back in the days when I did date, I occasionally dated online. Dating online is very popular in Denmark. It seems to be where everyone over the age of 25 meets a partner. One guy contacted me and said, you know, an American girl broke my heart very badly once. I hope you're not like her. I never went out with the guy. I mean, that's a hell of a history to live up to. And I believe that's why a lot of Muslim guys have trouble dating in Denmark. Everyone knows some girl who went out with a good-looking Muslim guy and it didn't work out. And you, ordinary Muslim guy, are are paying the price for someone else's heartbreak. Is that right? No. But Danes, like any other nationality, are not immune to stereotypes. Now, I see this myself in my daily life. For example, Danes love stories about American right-wing nutcases. Newspapers are full of them. Whenever some Republican fool says something that makes no sense, He is guaranteed front-page treatment in the Danish media. Unborn babies have a right to guns! Top of the Danish news. Now, these people do exist in the United States, but they're like, what, 3% of the population? I mean, there are 350 million of us. We're entitled to some idiots. But whenever I meet Danes, they are eager to tell me how much they disapprove of these people. I'm also told regularly But Americans are superficial. Danes seem particularly upset by the American greeting, how you doing? You know, the cashier at Walmart asked me, how you doing? But she didn't really care how I was doing. The Danes have stereotypes about other nationalities as well. Spaniards and Italians are seen as fun and sexy and romantic, but unlikely to arrive on time. Eastern Europeans work too hard at wages that are much too low, at least by Danish standards. Asians are okay because they work hard at things that Danes aren't interested in, like high-level engineering degrees. Danes also have stereotypes about other Nordic people. Norwegians are seen to be happy, friendly people with a humorous language. Everything sounds funny in Norwegian because everything sounds like singing. Stay away from my girlfriend or I am going to kill you! It's always happy time when a Norwegian is speaking. Swedes are seen as kind of stiff, humorless types who can't dance and can't hold their liquor. Finns are silent, angry drunks who carry knives. Oddly, given their history, Danes really like Germans. Really, really like Germans. Many Danes will say that Berlin is their favorite town. Danes also have stereotypes about each other, something that amazed me when I first arrived here. You have, like, 5 million people, and you're dividing yourselves into groups? But Danes themselves see a big difference between people from Sjælland, the island with Copenhagen on it, and Jylland, the bigger part of Denmark that's connected to Germany. As the stereotype goes, people from Jylland are seen as quiet. reliable, trustworthy, likely to marry young and start families. They're also sometimes seen as stubborn and very tight with money. They want to drive a hard bargain. I can testify that there's some truth to this. I occasionally sell my daughter's outgrown clothes and toys on The Blå Avis, which is Denmark's answer to eBay. I've almost stopped selling to Jylland. I have found that customers there first want a discount, Then they want me to run around finding the cheapest shipping available. And then when the object arrives, they find some tiny flaw that I haven't found and want all their money back. I mean, these are things that cost less than 100 crowns, sometimes less than 50 crowns. I think it's the thrill of the deal that matters more than the 5 crowns they save. But maybe they're just responding to the old-fashioned stereotype about people from Copenhagen trying to cheat people from Jylland. Københavner snuder is an actual word— Copenhagen cheater. I don't know if there are many actual cheaters on the streets of Copenhagen these days. I think pickpocketing and fraud games have been outsourced to Romania. But people in Copenhagen are still seen as slick, smart-ass, fast-talking, prone to exaggeration. Everything's the biggest and the best. The men wear expensive business suits and overpriced eyeglasses. The ladies wear designer makeup. Everybody has jobs that are non-jobs, like senior communications consultant or SEO specialist. People from Jylland have real jobs, like pig farmer or Lego designer. Of course, there are so many people from Jylland that live in Copenhagen these days that the stereotypes have started to drift away. And as Denmark becomes a more international country, maybe that will happen with the national stereotypes as well. And that's the How to Live in Denmark podcast for this week. You can join us on howtoliveindenmark.com or on our Xander Mellish Facebook page or on Twitter @howtoliveindk. The 2 is a number. Music arranged by George Garvis. See you next week. See you next week. Remember, the How to Live in Denmark book is available for download on Amazon.com. You can read it on any phone or tablet. All you need is the Kindle app, and the Kindle app is free. The book's not free, but it's not very expensive either. If you read the book and enjoy it, please leave a review on your local version of Amazon.com. It helps other people find the book and find the podcast.