Denmark has given us Legos, Earth Shoes, Danish pastry, Google Maps, the Egg chair, Scanpans, Carlsberg beer, C++, Christmas plates, the international wheelchair symbol, open-faced sandwiches, and Ozempic. Clever people, those Danes.
49 thoughts on “Denmark”
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Less than 24 hours ago I landed in Copenhagen and I am reading this from my hotel. I haven't been in Denmark since 1980. Suffice to say it was very weird to come across this post by you in Copenhagen.
Their colonial bloodlust was just unsuccessful enough that they don’t have Danish-speaking Africans and Caribbean Islanders knocking on their doors.
They were colonial but on the European continent / British Isles. I guess they got it out of their system.
They had colonies elsewhere. The American Virgin Islands belonged to Denmark until about a hundred years ago.
The Danish had small colonies in India that were later sold to Britain. Denmark was also in West Africa as part of the slave trade to the Western Danish Indies.
Yes, so low grade post-Viking colonialism did go on.
My theory is that they exported most of their male asshole genes during their Vikings period. The male breeders left behind were best described as 'Sven, keeper of sheep and watcher of wives'.
Was it donnie who wanted to buy Greenland from Denmark?
Depending on how you count, Denmark currently has the largest remaining European colonial empire: Greenland. 🙂
More precisely, it happened early enough (Vikings...) that we're not (yet...) supposed to get upset about it.
The slogan is that Normans were the supermen of Medieval Europe (amply attested by the factual record).
Let's see if this slogan lasts once the usual crowd decide to look closely at what that implies; I fully expect that in 30 years the new slogan will be that "Normans were the first Nazis" or something similar.
One might even say the Danes are Great.
I won't deign that with an answer.
C'mon, who doesn't like a good cheesy danish joke?
Yeah, and what about Great Danes? I once saw one at the vet put his paws on the counter and tower over all the tiny hunans in the waiting room.
I lived with one. Very nice dog. Sometimes it would go somewhere in the house and have to back out because there wasn't enough room to turn around.
You are barking.
The Novo Nordisk Foundation, which owns the eponymous drugmaker, is the wealthiest private philanthropic foundation in the world.
They also gave us Søren Kierkegaard and Niels Bohr.
Add Hans Christian Andersen and Oersted, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
Also Royal Dansk Butter Cookies and the show Borgen.
And don’t forget ebelskivers!
My mom used to make them for us on the weekend. Delicious. Proud to be half Danish.
And amusement parks.
And the classical music satire of Victor Borge.
He gave the funniest show I have ever attended in person. Both musically clever and hysterical.
Is Danish pastry really Danish? Or is it like French toast?
Kringle is Danish. If you're ever in central CA, take a trip to Solvang. Authentic Danish pastry.
“However, the origin of the pastry is not clear as it is called Kopenhagener in Austria and Wienerbrød in Denmark.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_pastry
So the Danish call it “Vienna bread” and the Austrians call it “Copenhagenish.” Apparently it’s a Danish variation of techniques brought to Copenhagen by Viennese bakers in the 19th century.
As a (former) chess player I think of Bent Larsen (1935-2010), once the best player from the West.
Earth Shoes!
Keep a pair in the back of the closet; wear them every so often to see if they're as awful as I remember.
And what did Switzerland give us? The cuckoo clock.
Danish response to Nazis' attempt to deport Jewish Danes in 1943.
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/king-christian-x-of-denmark
Please do not dilute their trademark. "Legos" is incorrect. "LEGO® Building Blocks" or "LEGO® Bricks" is correct.
My Scanpan grill pan is the absolute bomb. C++ was the first language I learned and hated every minute of it.
For a time I got mailed solicitations to subscribe to a software-oriented magazine. The teaser on the outside of the envelope was a line of C code (later C++) as a puzzle — what does this code do? That’s why Pascal was the last language I bothered to learn.
C++ as your first language? Ugh!! In the early 1990s, when C++ and object-oriented programming in general were first becoming popular, I attended a conference on CS education. One speaker -- from either Harvard or MIT, sorry but I no longer remember which -- talked about adding OOP to their new introductory course. His description of picking a language for the course (quoting from memory): "We considered C++ for about 10 seconds, and then immediately rejected it." So if they didn't their students could handle it...
I learned BASIC first, had a smattering of assembly that I really didn't understand, then PASCAL, APL, more assembly (that I finally go) and C. I eventually found C++, and mostly it was "a better C", at least for the way I thought about coding, data structures, and methods.
That pretty much describes my trajectory, too. (But APL? My sympathies. That often appears on lists of nominees for "worst programming language ever.")
APL is the only perfect programming language. You just have to think backwards in Greek in order to use it.
Kringle! In the U.S., the best comes from Racine, Wisconsin, where I lived for a time, long ago. Still get it mail-order on occasion.
My mom was born in Racine.
And I was born in California, but only lived there a little more than a year.
Should also mention Sandi Toksvig, the current host of the comedy quiz "QI" on the BBC. And if you are not watching that show, you are missing out on life (the last ten years or so of episodes can be streamed on Britbox).
Yes but we gave them KFC & Donald Trump.
A but disappointing they haven't thanked us.
I like most of the list, but C++ is an abomination. I love C, but absolutely hate all of the crap added to it in the ++ part. Easily the worst object oriented language ever created.
I won't disagree about the add-ons, but as much as I enjoyed learning (and teaching) C, it wasn't exactly user-friendly either. A friend of mine used to describe C code as "pseudo-telepathic".
A thousand years ago the rest of the world considered the Danes and their Viking brethren to be existential threats. Maybe there is hope for the rest of us too.
Don't shout it from the roof. The Danes are also wonderfully humble compared to the insufferably smug Dutch of whom, alas, I am one, and also the Swedes who should also have a lot in common with them.
Also Danish modern furniture (way before Ikea) and Danish ceramics. (A lot of both might actually be Swedish, I'm guessing.) I just looked up Marimekko. It's Finland based.
That Denmark is considered part of Scandinavia and not Germany is as odd as Staten Island being part of New York, not New Jersey.
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