The world as seen by Danes! 🙂 Piet Hein’s classical globe still makes people smile…

Did you know there is a Dane in Tom Cruise’s new sci-fi movie, Oblivion? Danish media seem to be busy making sure that noone forgets that skuespiller (actor) Nikolaj Coster-Waldau is, well, a dansker (Dane)…

The avis (”a-VEEce”, newspaper) Information [infore-mah-SHON] recently hit the nail on the head when they skrev (wrote) that … Danes love reading about Danes! Especially those getting attention i udlandet (abroad, literally ”in the outland”)!

Heard about the new series Hannibal broadcast on the US network NBC? Many people in Denmark have – because the hovedrolle (main character, literally ”head role”) is being played by – you guessed it – a Dane (Mads Mikkelsen). And what about the Copenhagen restaurant Noma, which has been kåret til verdens bedste (chosen the world’s best) a couple of times? We Danes like to think that since someone international [INternashoenaal] has called it so, then of course it must be the talk of the entire global village…

Selv om vi ikke er store, vil vi gerne læse om, at vi er store, Information tells us. Even if we aren’t big, we would like to read about us being big. According to the article, the stereotypical Dane suffers from a unique combination of storhedsvanvid (megalomania, literally ”greatness madness”) and mindreværdskompleks (inferiority complex). Michael Böss, who’s an expert on nationalisme, calls it the Lille Danmark (little Denmark) syndrome. He dates this følelse (feeling) to 1814, when Denmark lost Norway to Sweden, and ceased to be a powerful European nation.

So, the next time you meet a Dane abroad, remember to give him a hug and tell him you do know where Denmark is! If you’re heldig (lucky), he might gradually tø op (thaw out, literally ”thaw up”), and start showing some genuine interest for your place of origin! 😉

How are things in your country? Do people there also love reading about themselves in other countries?