"living Danishly" isn't the solution we think it is
an essay in response to people telling me to live like Europeans
Years ago, in the Before-Times1, I went on a date with a man who was much further left, politically, than I was then, and knew enough about history to justify his views. Michael was charming and well educated, and we were talking about where I’m from (Iraq and Armenia) and I made some remark about colonization and England and France’s occupations of the Middle East, and how tired I was of hearing about the royal family and seeing article instructing me on how to eat like a French woman [in order to never gain weight] or effortlessly style my hair like one.
I said that I’d much rather emulate the Nordic countries, the truly peaceful ones, because it seemed like they’d figured out how to live happily2. Michael’s face turned, and he launched in about how countries like Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark enjoy a reputation of being the happiest and best places to live and raise a family, meanwhile they profit off of arms sales that contribute to death and violence all over the world, including contributing to internationally recognized human rights violations3. This rubbed me the wrong way, as did much of what leftists told me back then, both because I didn’t know what he was talking about and the information he presented didn’t mesh with the reality I had of the world.
A couple weeks later Michael disappeared off the face of the earth but this part of our conversation stayed with me for years, until last month, when I stumbled upon two articles. The first was Kirsten Powers’ essay titled “We Don't Need 'Self-Help,' We Need Support,”4 about what we can learn from Danish society in order to live happier lives in the US, and the second, from Amnesty International, announcing that several NGOs are suing Denmark to get them to stop their continued export of arms to Israel5, arms that are being used to commit genocide in Gaza. The two were published in the same week, with Powers’ essay going live three days after Amnesty International’s announcement of the lawsuit.
There is a clear risk that weapons and military equipment that Denmark directly and indirectly exports to Israel will be used to commit serious crimes against civilians in Gaza. In doing so, Denmark violates international rules on arms trade and risks becoming complicit in violations of international humanitarian law — including war crimes — and a plausible genocide.
— Amnesty International, “Denmark: NGOs sue the Danish state to stop arms exports to Israel”
In her essay, Powers writes about what Americans can learn from the Danes (how to live happier lives by adopting the Danes’ approaches to work-life balance, as well as emulating their strong community ties and responsibility to one another) and how the US could stand to adopt Danish social welfare policies (long paid maternity and paternity leave, healthcare, free education, shorter work weeks, guaranteed generous paid vacation).
None of these government-sponsored programs are anything I’d ever oppose, but the essay left me with a bitter taste in my mouth, akin to the way I feel listening to the demands of white liberal feminists. They’re never original, never revolutionary, but rather always asking for things to be better for them alone within the system that already exists without considering others who are also disenfranchised, by design, within our status quo.
Sure, capitalism and patriarchy are destroying lives and our planet, but so long as women in the Global North can get longer maternity leave while still contributing to and working within a system responsible for the death of pregnant women abroad6, then things should be fine.
I want to analyze Powers’ essay and choice to use Denmark as an example, a country that historically benefits from both colonialism as well as the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and how Nordic countries (uncritically) live in Americans’ minds as paragons of progressive civilization.
In “We Don’t Need ‘Self Help, We Need Support,” Powers write that she’s “not holding up Denmark as the perfect society by any means,” but what immediately stood out to me is her inability to write an essay with even a college freshman’s grasp of the concept of intersectionality. She doesn’t say it, but I suspect that her definition of a Danish person is “colorblind,” one that doesn’t consider the experiences of the immigrants and descendants of immigrants working and studying in Denmark.
For one, Powers writes that “Danes are communitarian to a fault and have a sense of duty and responsibility to their fellow citizens.” Meanwhile, a 2023 report7 from the Danish Institute for Human Rights (DIHR), which surveyed “minority-ethnic persons,” defined as people who “grew up in Denmark, i.e., persons who were born in Denmark or came here as children,” found that “84 per cent of minority-ethnic persons [in Denmark] state that they have experienced discrimination and prejudice8 due to their ethnic background.” That same report also notes that “one in eight (12 per cent) states that they have been subjected to violence or threats because of their ethnic background (hate crimes). Victims of violence report that passers-by rarely intervene.”
Powers also mentions how much Danes love their jobs, writing, “Incredibly, in a survey, 57 percent of Danes said they wouldn't quit their jobs even if they won the lottery. […] This might be because they choose jobs based on what they enjoy.” Powers doesn’t cite this survey and I cannot verify the statistic she offers. I’d be curious about the demographics of people that answered that survey, because the DIHR report noted that “almost half (48 per cent) of [minority-ethnic persons] who have sent an application state that they have experienced rejection because of their ethnic background. This is especially true for applications for jobs, training, housing, and banking.” It’s wonderful that over half of Danes have a job they love, but what does working in Denmark look like for those who face discrimination and are excluded from the roles they want?
Lastly, Powers writes about how Danes are culturally encouraged to volunteer and join clubs: “Half of the Danes volunteer, and around 90 percent are members of societies. The average Dane is a member of 2.8 clubs.” Yet when minority-ethnic persons try to integrate into Danish society, they are met with pushback: the DIHR report notes that “80 per cent state that they have either been subjected to verbal insults, excluded from communities, or met with prejudice. Young men in particular also report that people behave as if they are afraid of them.”
This draws a different picture of Denmark than the one in Powers’ essay about their idyllic society. If Danes do feel a sense of duty to one another, then the DIHR report shows that this sense of duty is only extended to those within the in-group, the people that “fit” an ethnic conception of a Danish person, not cultural. Even though the “minority-ethnic persons” surveyed were either born in Denmark or raised in Denmark since childhood, which makes them, culturally, Danish, they still face barriers, even when they try to integrate into Danish society. So it doesn’t matter if they grew up there, speak the language fluently, contribute to the economy — they look different, and therefore are subject to being treated differently.
I need to be clear that I’m not criticizing Powers’ essay as uniquely problematic. This genre of an American-writing-about-a-country-we-could-learn from has existed long before Powers’ essay. In my experience, especially reading travel blogs as well as befriending travelers abroad, Americans tend to write and talk about developed countries through rose-colored glasses, exalting these countries’ virtues only, while these same people tend to be more critical and more likely to point out the various problems of the developing countries they visit. It’s a bias problem that a lot of us don’t bother investigating.
This isn’t a piece against Powers, or against Denmark, so much as it is about examining this mentality we allow ourselves to fall into. When our American writing refuses to engage with the multifaceted reality of the history of other countries, when we write only about the experience of a country’s ethnic/religious/racial/sexual majority, then we end up leaving so much prejudice and outright discrimination unexamined. By writing these imbalanced, unnuaced pieces, we are propping up the same systems that already disenfranchise millions here in the US.
Writing like this, to me, plays into the trope of color blindness, which coincidentally, is a hot topic in Denmark9:
[H]ygge is more about a social atmosphere where all members participate: fun and conflict-free. It’s within this context that hyggeracisme happens; where one hears the N-word or sees a Nazis gesture in the name of “fun.” Since the state of hygge dictates a stress-free mood, anyone who speaks out is perceived as ruining the hygge. This is the person that is ultimately condemned by the group and vilified for breaking social norms.
[…]
If Danes can avoid seeing or acknowledging racial differences, then they can, in effect, avoid the construct of race itself entirely. “This ignorance has nurtured a culture of ‘normative colour blindness’ that works to ensure that those who criticize racism appear as the ones who introduce race into the conversation,” [historian and professor Mathias] Danbolt adds.
A colorblind society can be neither just nor equitable. So when we write about these European countries, extolling their idyllic ways of life, ignoring their tendency towards Islamophobia and antisemitism, as well as their anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism, we’re freely laundering their reputations for them. Furthermore, considering all that’s going on in the world, writing about Denmark — and all European nations currently supporting Israel — without addressing their export of weapons to Israel as well as parts to the US10 to assemble jets to send to Israel means collectively overlooking their complicity in the genocide taking place before us.
Denmark, according to the 2023 World Happiness Report, is the second happiest country in the world. I do believe that we have a lot to learn from governments that prioritize their people over profit, but when we interpret data like this, we need to be more critical of it. How have these countries risen to the top of the scale? How did they come to their modern-day wealth and stability? Can you holistically explain to me why Lebanon and Afghanistan rank at the bottom of this list, and the part that Western countries played in their decades-long destabilization?
In writing this piece, I want to call on more writing that is anti-colonial and that centers global justice rather than white comfort within our existing systems of oppression. I want writing that isn’t so damn tone-deaf. I want writing that at least considers intersectionality, which should be expected of everyone but especially writers and cultural critics with wide readership.
Instead of these vapid lifestyle pieces, I want to learn about people who manage to make a life for themselves in spite of Western aggression rather than people living happily due to Western aggression. Call me pessimistic, but it just doesn’t seem all that impressive to be happy when your country is wealthy (thanks to centuries of exploitation and slave trade), when no foreign government is constantly scheming to topple your own, and when your right to self-determination is guaranteed.
It’s true, every country has its problems, but I’m no longer interested in reading viral, uncritical essays telling me to look for answers in all the wrong places.
Enormous thanks to Caio for editing my angst out of this draft, and to N. for being an early reader.
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Pre-2020.
Reader, I had recently come back from a trip to Iceland, where I was enamored with the way the locals left their babies out in a stroller on the street, in the middle of winter, so the baby can take a nap and the parents can go grab coffee with their friends.
“An introduction to Nordic arms exports since 1990, with a focus on Finland” — Tuuli Veikkanen, Nordics.info, Aarhus University. 21 Feb 2020.
“We Don't Need 'Self-Help,' We Need Support” — Kirsten Powers, Changing the Channel. 15 March 2024.
“Denmark: NGOs sue the Danish state to stop arms exports to Israel” — Amnesty International. 12 March 2024.
Video from Glia_Intl — Instagram. 7 May 2024. Caption: “Bridget, a midwife from California, is inside Rafah and witnessing the effects of Israeli occupation and ongoing genocide against birthing people, newborns and children.”
Oplevet etnisk diskrimination i Danmark — Institut for Menneske Rettigheder. 2023. Report in Danish with English summary on page 98.
The report defines racism as follows: “In this report, racism is broadly understood as discrimination or prejudice that are based on ethnicity. Racism does not necessarily imply a desire to put ethnic minorities at a disadvantage. Discrimination and prejudice can also arise from misunderstandings, ignorance, and unnecessary generalisations.”
“What is Hygge Racism & How Did it Become so Pervasive in Danish Culture?” — Jaughna Nielsen-Bobbit, Scandinavia Standard. 6 July 2020.
“Which countries supply Israel with arms and why is Biden reluctant to stop?” — Robert Tait, The Guardian. 9 April 2024.
Loved it! Also, Norway and Norwegians love to think of themselves as very green. Well, their country is, while they destroy others countries' nature. I once told a Norwegian friend about a oil operation in Brazilian Amazon and how it leaked and polluted many rivers. She had no idea.
People in rich countries can only have a good life with many rights, because they explore the work and resources from poor countries. It is as simple as that.
Thank you so much for this piece and the very necessary reminder that it serves. I think about how when I quoted two pieces from Powers in one of my own, as an Indian (a post colonial country rising tall now) - I’m so used to be agreeing with part of the story because I rarely ever hear the full story that reflects my world. So good at acclimating we have become. Your piece reminds us how there is SO much more to the story. It also reminds me of how Americans love to emulate the French (French girl makeup! French girl non chalance! Raise your kids like the French!) meanwhile generations of Americans have been raised by African American women, doing the hard work. Anyhoo, loved this, thanks!