Danish babies here and there, Babies in the public sphere, Danish babies everywhereee

I have been harping on this for months.... Denmark is FULL OF BABIES. It's really pretty overwhelming. I've contemplated doing a survey of my bus rides - the frequency / number of babies per bus ride. But I'm not dedicated enough to baby statistics to pull that off especially since I bike now unless I'm going out and saturday night at 2am is not the highest baby-traffic time. Even though I HAVE seen people pushing strollers around like it ain't no thang on friday at 11:30. I've also considered surveying the relative amount of men and women with babies on public transit... for SURE more daddies with babies in public here than anywhere in the US. If only I had little research assistants to do my bidding, the number of sociological surveys we could get done!

As I write here in a cafe near my house I can see no less than three babies. One baby cries as her mom rocks and soothes her, another happily squirms after having finished up a big bottle of lunch, and a third naps while parents eat lunch. About 15 minutes ago two little boys who were very recently babies left with their parents... they were wearing matching danish-child outfits of rain boots, huge colorful raincoats, and striped t-shirts that are probably more hip than anything I owned before college.

A joke I heard recently:

American: "Why are there so many gay nannies in Denmark?"

Dane: "... those are the children's fathers..."


(You could also insert Sweden or Scandinavia or Norway for Denmark there.... as with most Scandinavia jokes I've ever seen - unless it's one group at the expense of the other)

Think I'm kidding??? here are some real live photos of babies in carriages in Copenhagen. EVERYWHERE, I tell you. The first three I just found online but the others I took along the lakes, in Nørrebro, and in Assistens Kirkegaard respectively.

People sometimes leave their babies outside in the buggies while they eat / have a coffee date... oh trust and social cohesion. This photo nicely shows how black-on-black-on-black fashion also extends to the baby accessory realm.

Inventive baby bikes...

This looks like a Lagkagehuset, a popular bakery chain... and one extremely attentive Danish baby.

Also note in the right lower corner the baby bike seat.... One of my favorite scenes in Copenhagen is someone biking along with their baby totally asleep, strapped into one of these seats, flopping around behind them. They're totally safe, don't worry. Danes are nothing if not attentive to child bike safety.

That's just cute.

Janteloven... as told by two Norwegians, a Finn and an American:

As part of my thesis this past spring I did some research into Janteloven, "Jante's Law", which is essentially a code of conduct and pattern of group behavior in Scandinavia centered around the idea that nobody is superior to anybody else. The "laws" were originally set down by Danish (or so I thought until this afternoon) author Aksel Sandemose in his 1933 novel, En flyktning krysser sitt spor, "A fugitive crosses his tracks". He didn't at all invent the term or pattern but merely described, somewhat satirically, the Danish village of Jante in which everyone lived by these 'commandments'.

Mr. Aksel Sandemose himself

The rules state (translation courtesy of Wikipedia):

        1.       You are not to think you're anything special.

               2.     You are not to think you're as good as us.

               3.     You are not to think you're smarter than us.

               4.     You are not to convince yourself that you're better than us.

               5.      You are not to think you know more than us.

               6.    You are not to think you are more important than us.

               7.     You are not to think you are good at anything.

               8.     You are not to laugh at us.

               9.     You are not to think anyone cares about you.

               10.  You are not to think you can teach us anything.

An eleventh rule recognized in the novel is:
         11.  You are not to think that there aren't a few things we know about you.

We’re all studying for the exams now (I’m finally out in the world among the people, mostly healthy!!!). During a break just a bit ago we started joking around about the Scandinavian panopticon because yeah, I make friends with that sort of crowd. Hege mentioned something about Janteloven and they turned to me to explain it but I knew about it from my thesis on Danish nationalism. Lotta said something like, “Oh really? Because the author was Swedish.” Hege and I then simultaneously insisted that he was Norwegian / Danish. Ohhh national identity, at it again.

Turns out we were all a little bit wrong – though Lotta was the wrongest ;). Aksel Sandemose was half Danish, half Norwegian. Grew up in Denmark and moved to Norway, but the town of “Jante” was technically placed somewhere in Jutland. Hege and our friend Mari, who is Norwegian and has lived in Copenhagen for the past four years, were completely shocked…. apparently in Norwegian they think of Janteloven as a Norwegian concept. We then launched into a conversation about Janteloven in their lives which was, for me, highly entertaining.

Lotta on advice she received from professors about how to get a job:  "You need to get over Jantelagen!"   (that's the Swedish spelling)

On online profiles/personalities:

Mari: “I don't want people to think I'm indirectly saying something good about myself on facebook so I have to be careful what I post."

Lotta: "I have to be careful when I’m writing on my blog – even having a blog could be bragging - I know my mother is reading it... so can't brag!"

Hege on how American talk about their physical appearance: “You can't say that you think you're beautiful - can't say it out loud."

Ohhhh Aksel, causing an international sensation in the 21st century....

The Welfare State

A couple nights ago I had a friend over for dinner and excellent conversation. She also gave me her old Nokia phone so I'm not connected until the iPhone comes out and I can jump on the deals. Another friend gave me an old sim card he had, another is lending me her bike for a year, a fourth hooked me up with a job, and finally another got me connected to this apartment. Again, I must say, the whole "Danes are unfriendly" trope just doesn't hold up for me. Different social mores on the whole, yes of course, but also so many remarkably loyal and kind people.

The dinner date. The Welfare State. Ida is a Danish law student in her final semester before she writes her thesis - meaning, she knows a thing or two about Danish law and social/political structures. All her life she's thought of the welfare state as a combination of assistance to the poor and elderly, to people with disabilities, to the student stipend she receives. And the logic behind it, to her understanding, was that Denmark takes care of it's own and that it's a strong value to ensure that everyone has equal opportunities. This week Ida started a course on "Social Law" - meaning laws related to Danish social structures, chiefly the things we think of as the welfare state. It was one of those classes, she says, where you leave with the feeling that EVERYONE needs to hear what you just learned because it's that important and paradigm - shifting. The professor didn't say anything descriptive about Denmark that she didn't already know, but she did frame the Danish social system from a totally fresh perspective.

The welfare state is NOT, Ida explained to me, at all connected to moneys for those who are unable to work, or are too poor to provide for themselves. This whole system comes from two sets of logic. The pure welfare state logic derives from the idea that if we all chip in our savings than we will be insured when times are rough for us or simply when we're old. Essentially - pay in now and your children will have a good start out into the world and you'll be cared for later. It's really a large-scale security program. Not a romantic "long-of-Denmark" driven exercise. Programs for those who can't work because they are injured, prematurely ill, or whatever reason - stem from a different logic. The belief that everyone should have enough to get by because it's best for society and it's simply what is right. So when political discourse starts to talk about how much immigrants or refugees "cost the welfare state" they're muddling with two sets of logic. The issue is that people who haven't been here for a while have not paid into the system and are not PART of the welfare state - they are part of the other set of logic.

One of the scariest challenges to the welfare state, Ida was saying - and I heartily agree, is that young people take it for granted and don't quite understand it. Young people generally think it's "awesome" that they get the student stipend (S.U.) but really take that for granted - and they fact that of course they wouldn't pay for education or health care. It's something that the generation before witnessed being achieved but now... it's how life has always been for young people.

I have more to think about, I'll come back to it.

Here's Ida helping me learn Danish with "Peter Pedal" - Curious George in Denmark.