I spent last week visiting Denmark! I had a blast in my home away from home, and was reminded once again of all the differences that stick out when you’re visiting a foreign country. Often it’s not the big differences that catch you the most off-guard, but the smaller ones—like accidentally turning your outlet off or forgetting to slow down while driving through a country town.
With that in mind, here’s part one of my list of 99 differences between Denmark and the USA that you should be aware of before visiting.
Disclaimer: This list is based on a couple years of personal observations and shouldn’t be understood as a definitive guide. I generally focus on the small, everyday things that stick out unexpectedly, rather than abstract differences in culture and society. My goal is to highlight the rich variety between two countries that are similar in many other ways—and hopefully keep you from getting any parking tickets.
- Danish days are longer in summer and shorter in winter compared to US days. This is especially noticeable in winter, when it starts getting dark around 3:30 or 4:00. The rainy weather doesn’t help; Danish winters have more rainy days than clear days, and most of the time the sky is a single shade of grey, like you’re stuck in a giant golf ball.
- There are no pickup trucks. Consumer cars are generally pretty small, though semi trucks and large contractor vehicles are still common.
- Carpeted floors are rarer. Usually they’re wood, vinyl, or tile.
- Nature is your air conditioning. Only new buildings have built-in AC. In the winter, radiators in each room provide heating.
- You can’t turn right on red.
- If you’re idling for too long, your engine will stop, and then automatically restart when you hit the gas. This is probably to reduce emissions, since Denmark is so environmentally conscious.
- Organic food options are everywhere at every grocery store. Vegan options are also common at restaurants.
- Bike lanes are very common and are separate from car and pedestrian lanes. In cities, bike lanes have their own traffic lights!
- Traffic lights turn yellow and red together right before turning green. Everyone starts moving while it’s yellow/red.
- Toilets almost invariably have a #1 button and a #2 button.
- Showers have two separate knobs: one for volume and one for temperature. There’s usually two separate pipes going to these controls, one for warm water and one for hot water. You can tell which one is for hot water because calcium always builds up on it. On top of that, both the volume and temperature knobs only can be turned up to a certain point before you have to push in a button to turn them further. This also helps limit consumption of water and heat. Another point for environmental consciousness.
- There’s only a couple different brands of everything, so you start to get used to seeing the same towels, plates, chairs, foods, etc. no matter where you are in the country. This makes sense, as Denmark’s population is less than 1/50 the size of the US’s.
- Outlets and plugs are circular, larger than American ones, and have two long prongs. They come out of the wall more easily.
- Lightswitches are square, mostly flat plates with a slight concave bend to them. Outlets sometimes have an associated switch that turns on/off the power, which can be helpful if you want to turn off your appliance from the wall.
- Vacuums (“dust-suckers”) are small boxes that roll on two wheels and use a hose, rather than the standing hoovers that Americans are used to.
- People sleep with a duvet (dyne) rather than blankets. Pro tip: the fastest way to re-cover a duvet is to turn the cover inside out, reach through it and grab the two opposite corners, grab two corners of the duvet while still holding the cover, and then shake.
- Danish humor revolves entirely around hating the Swedes. Coincidentally, Danish history revolves entirely around going to war with the Swedes.
- Public spaces are quiet. Talking loudly will brand you as a foreigner faster than you can say “where’s KFC?” (which is, in fact, found in Denmark).
- There never seem to be many kids around. Like its European neighbors, Denmark has a lot birth rate—in stark contrast to my home Utah, which consistently has one of America’s highest birth rates. Denmark’s birth rate is well below the replacement rate. (See also: Do it for Denmark.)
- Gymnasiums are actually schools, not where you go to work out.
- If there’s a spoon placed horizontally above your plate, it means there’s going to be dessert. Among my friends, this is known as the “Spoon of Prophecy.”
- The most Danish cuisine is the open-faced sandwich (smørrebrød), assembled on rye or white bread. There are very particular rules about which topping combinations can go on a sandwich, which are enforced at varying degrees of strictness depending on your host. Liver pâté (leverpostej) is a common sandwich topping and is quite good, especially warm. For a treat, you can top your sandwich with a thin slice of chocolate (pålægschokolade). But not at the same time as leverpostej. Again, rules.
- Aside from the sandwiches, other special foods you’ll find in Denmark are pickled red cabbage (rødkål) and red beets(rødbeder). Treats include rum-filled chocolate skildpadder (turtles), flødeboller (fluffy marshmallows surrounded by a thin layer of chocolate that you can make explode if you blow into them properly), and æbleskiver (round pancake things eaten with jam). I’m no foodie, but those are the ones that stuck out to me.
- Danes eat everything with a fork and knife. Everything. Fork in the left hand, knife in the right. One of my friends made an instructional video for eating spaghetti with a fork and knife.
- The green pump is gasoline and the black pump is diesel. I cannot stress the importance of this enough. The only option for gasoline is typically Unleaded 95. Gas is also quite a bit more expensive than in the US—one of many disincentives for driving a car in Denmark.
- Bicycles usually have a built-in lock that goes around the back wheel to prevent it from rotating. Some are also equipped with a space for children or goods attached to the front, rather than the back.
- Despite Denmark’s general bike-friendliness, there is cobblestone everywhere.
- There are castles all over the place, and that’s a normal thing. Many are museums and owned by the state/monarchy; some others are privately owned.
- Buildings and towns look very different architecturally. Red-roofed buildings are common, and you’ll find thatched-roof buildings and old estates in the countryside. Old buildings are often repurposed into other things, such as apartments, so don’t always trust what the words on the side say if they’re older than a century or two.
- Traffic lights don’t hang over intersections in the cities, and you sometimes have to look around for them. Typically there are several facing each direction, for maximum visual coverage.
- Danes are reasonable humans who use the metric system and Celsius temperatures. Celsius is easy to get a hang of: 0 to 10 is cold, 10 to 20 is warm, 20 to 30 is hot. Room temperature is right around 20. It doesn’t often get below freezing, but you can expect snow occasionally.
- Cities are designed for people, not cars. At the center of each city is a walking mall (gågade) which, as a rule, must be equipped with at least two clothing stores, barber shops, restaurants, and lingerie stores, and at least one bakery and drug store.
- Danish culture is much more open about sex and nudity, which can be shocking to American sensibilities. It was the world’s first country to legalize pornography, both literary and pictorial/audiovisual.
- Rather than a yellow line down the middle of the road, there’s usually just a thicker white line or double white line.
- There are roundabouts everywhere. Before each roundabout is a sign that shows a “map” of the roundabout and where each road goes.
- All cars are equipped with a small dial with a clock face (p-skive) on the bottom-right corner of the windshield. When you park in time-limited parking, you have to set the p-skive to the time you arrived, so the parking controller knows when you arrived. In larger cities, you sometimes have to find a kiosk, input your license plate number, and pay for however long you’ll be parking (price varies depending on zone), rather than using the p-skive. There are also no-parking signs everywhere, which are blue with a red strikethrough; red curbs aren’t a thing in Denmark. You will also get ticketed for parking close to an intersection, driveway, or turn in the road (which I totally did not learn from experience). A parking ticket runs you about $100 US, and a speeding ticket up to about $300 depending on how fast you were going when the camera caught you.
- A small amount called pant is added to the price of bottled drinks at the register. You can return to the grocery store and use a machine to recycle your bottles when they’re done, and the machine gives you a slip of paper that you can redeem for cash or a discount at the register. (Or the amount can be donated to charity.)
- Grocery stores are much smaller, and not every store has every type of good. However, supermarkets are becoming increasingly common, though they’re still not as large as those in the US.
- Denmark has a lot of churches, but people are generally less religious than in the US. Every village has a church at the center, and they’re often unlocked so you can visit. Churches are elaborately furnished with stunning altarpieces and beautifully carved pulpits. The church (Folkekirken) is part of the state, though there are also independent churches called frikirker (free churches) that can vary in form but are more like contemporary American Protestant services—as opposed to the Lutheran Folkekirke services, which are more ritualistic.
- Danish peanut butter is runnier and must be stirred. “American-style” peanut butter is, however, sometimes available at the grocery store Lidl, along with other “American-style” goods.
- A low-cost fast food option is a kebab (shawarma) wrap, which is kind of the Danish equivalent of a pizza place. There are pizza places in Denmark, and sometimes they’re combined with kebab shops, but (in my opinion) the pizza isn’t as good as American pizza.
- Electric car chargers are common, and it’s usually free to park electric cars.
- Speed limits work a little differently—besides being in kilometers per hour, there’s a default speed limit of 50 km/h in towns, 80 km/h outside of towns, and 130 km/h on the motorway (meaning that start- and end-of-town signs effectively double as speed limit signs). Signs can indicate other speeds, e.g. 60 km/h, but when it stops being 60 km/h, there will be an “end of 60 km/h zone” sign rather than a sign indicating the new speed. Speed limit signs are a white circle within a red ring.
- Stop signs are rare. A row of white triangles on the road is used instead, which technically just mean you must yield to oncoming traffic.
- Denmark has several makes of cars that aren’t found in the US, including Peugeot, Renault, Skoda, Opel, and others. There are also lots of Teslas.
- License plates are long and skinny and are an EU-wide design, with a one- or two-letter code above the EU flag indicating which country the car is from. The rest of the plate is white for personal vehicles or yellow for business vehicles, and is always a series of two letters, two numbers, and then three numbers.
- The Danish language is the most noticeable difference. However, most Danes can speak some English (it’s mandatory in schools). The Danish writing system has some cool quirks: there are three new letters after Z in the alphabet: Ææ, Øø, and Åå. There are also several options for quotation marks: »these«, “these”, and occasionally „these“.
- Grocery stores are a one-way path. Once you step through the automatic gate, the only way out is through the checkout line.
- Most grocery stores have a bakery of some kind, from a simple bakery rack to an entirely separate counter. (The McDonalds in Nyborg even has a bakery.) Danish pastries are to die for.
- Milk comes in different delineations: skummetmælk (skim milk) with 0.1-0.2% fat, mini mælk (mini milk?) with 0.4%, letmælk (light milk) with 1.5%, and sødmælk (sweet milk) with 3.5%. They come in 1-liter cardboard cartons; you won’t find plastic milk jugs anywhere.
What did I get wrong? What did I leave out? Let me know in the comments below. Tune in next week for grocery store checkout lines, cemeteries, Christmas, and more. ∎
