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Get to Know Denmark!
By Tim Newlin
Regular contributor to the Gazette
*FREE* timtim.com draw & color feature!
President Barack Obama and Oprah Winfrey are both arriving here in Copenhagen this week. President Obama to rally for the Olympic Games in Chicago and Oprah to do a 30 minute TV show about Denmark which will be broadcast in 145 countries on October 9. We here at timtim thought we’d add our 30 years of Danish experience to the pot of info – so here’s a very brief look at this tiny Scandinavian country.
On the surface Denmark seems a very well functioning, modern society filled with happy citizens who benefit from free schools and universities, housing for all, medical care for all, a postal system that actually delivers the mail on time, and a well run and efficient economy based on high-tech, pigs, North Sea oil, wind energy, and pharmaceuticals.
Denmark is a tiny place made up of a peninsula and islands laying like floating wind-swept pancakes between the Baltic and the North Sea, and now with bridges that allow Norwegians to drive down through Sweden, across to Denmark and straight to Germany and the European continent. There are just over 5 million people with names like Hansen, Jacobsen, Andersen, Christiansen, and Rassmussen (the surname of the present and the previous two prime ministers).
It is a Parliamentary Democracy with a symbolic royal family. Much loved and revered Queen Margrethe II is, officially, the Head of State, but she has no political power and she and her entire family have no voting rights. The highest mountain in Denmark is only about 350 feet high and the famous statue of The Little Mermaid really is little – about 3 ft. high.
At this writing there are about 300,000 foreigners living in Denmark – most in the greater Copenhagen area on the eastern Island of Zealand. Unlike the United States of America, Denmark has a State Religion – Christianity – and it is taught in all the schools. There are also thousands of churches spread across the country and several hundred alone in the capitol. Some are small and charming, but others are grand and stately. It is, therefore, rather amusing to discover that hardly anyone goes to church here, but that does not stop some right-wing people from having rather racist attitudes towards those of other faiths or with differing ethnic backgrounds.
Most Danes speak English (and a host of other languages) quite well. Languages are a necessary large chunk of their time in school, otherwise nobody in the world would be able to understand them. Danish is one of the most difficult languages to learn and is almost impossible for foreigners to pronounce. Danes love to travel and can be found in other countries almost as a regular summer migration. The charter tour industry took Denmark by storm back in the late 60′s and has grown steadily so that almost everyone here has photos and memories and friends from abroad.
In the Spring and summer Denmark is wonderful. But for almost 9 months of the year it is a cold, dark, expensive, heavily-taxed place with an unusual number system (that counts backwards after the number 20). Despite this, there is much that the USA as well as many other countries could learn from what the Danes have accomplished.
Things have changed drastically in Denmark over the last 30 years. In the mid 70′s Denmark had only one Black and white channel on TV and that broadcast only from 6 pm until 11 pm, only wealthy people owned cars, very few apartments in Copenhagen had proper bathrooms, there were no fast-food chain stores and no super markets, and no one knew what a Frisbee was. The shops all closed at 5 pm weekdays and at noon on Saturday and all day Sunday. If you needed anything outside those hours it was just tough luck. The big changes started because of oil.
The 1973 OPEC oil embargo hit Denmark hard. 93% of their energy came from Middle East oil. Their solution was to cut down use and to start in on serious programs of energy savings and alternative energy sources. In Denmark, they have proved that this not only works, but that it creates jobs.
They were forced to be creative and introduced energy-smart taxes that stimulated its own North Sea oil drilling and also gave birth to new energy companies like Vestas, the world’s biggest wind turbine company. Today, one-third of all wind turbines in the world come from Vestas Wind and 20% of Denmark’s electricity comes from wind power (In the USA only 1% comes from wind). In the last 10 years, Denmark’s exports of energy efficiency products have tripled. This and other new industries like the way they recycle waste heat from their coal-fired power plants and use it for home heating and hot water, or the way they burn their trash in central stations to provide home heating (There are almost no landfills in Denmark) is one of the reasons that unemployment in Denmark today is, despite the present crisis, still very low. In 1973 Denmark got 99 percent of its energy from the Middle East. Today Denmark is one of the only oil exporting countries in the EU.
Denmark today is a modern country. Everyone has and knows how to use a computer, all the well-known chain stores and fast-food franchises have invaded, shops are open almost every day, most families have cars, modern appliances, several TV sets and everyone has a mobile phone. Copenhagen has become a modern metropolis with all the trappings, and it managed to do this without loosing its soul and its feel of being THE WORLD’S BIGGEST SMALL TOWN.
The price for all this is that Denmark has the highest tax rate in the world. Although the Danish minimum wage is about $18/hr, a Big Mac hamburger costs $7 and it costs nearly $800,000 to buy a 1000 sq ft apartment in Copenhagen or $3000/month to rent the same if you can find one. A very small, new economy car in strip-down form costs $20,000. And a gallon of gas in Denmark costs about $8 a gallon!
Rush hour traffic in the Danish capitol, Copenhagen, is 50% bicycles. This means less traffic, less pollution and less obesity (thus savings to the free health care system as a reward). Denmark’s former prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen (now Secretary General of NATO) was quoted last year as saying “The cure is not to reduce gas prices, but to raise them even higher to break the addiction to oil.” The answer, he thought, was to cut down use and to start in on serious programs of energy savings and alternative energy sources. In Denmark, they are proving that this not only works, but that it also creates jobs.
There is much that can be learned from the Danes and their struggle to deal with energy, health care, and taxes. Maybe President Obama should extend his stay and hang around for the Climate Summit in December. But then there is the US health care issue, a banking crisis, a housing slump, unemployment, a couple of wars and a dog to take care of back in the White House.
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