{"id":1135,"date":"2014-08-30T23:41:55","date_gmt":"2014-08-30T23:41:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/?p=1135"},"modified":"2014-08-30T23:41:55","modified_gmt":"2014-08-30T23:41:55","slug":"the-battle-of-stereotypes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/2014\/08\/30\/the-battle-of-stereotypes\/","title":{"rendered":"The Battle of Stereotypes"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"AarhusLoc\"<\/a>

Thanks to Niels Elgaard Larsen at Wikimedia Commons<\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201dJylland, du er hovedlandet<\/span>\u201d. Jutland, you\u2019re the main country.<\/span> Ever since Danish national bard H.C. Andersen wrote those words (in 1859), people from Sj\u00e6lland<\/span> (Zealand) have resented him for it. Andersen himself was from Fyn<\/span> (Funen), the middle island, but spent most of his career in K\u00f8benhavn<\/span>, so why couldn\u2019t he see that the island of the capital was \u201dhovedlandet<\/span>\u201d, instead of some backwater-ish peninsula where noone really went anyway?<\/p>\n

Foreigners are sometimes surprised that Denmark is so diverse. If you leave Copenhagen and go to, say, the West Coast of Jutland, the culture and the atmosphere really change. A friend of mine once went into a McDonald\u2019s in Western Jutland, accompanied by a Copenhagener. The Copenhagener wanted to order something. The girl at the counter kept asking him what he was saying? True story.<\/p>\n

F\u00f8r eller siden<\/span>, sooner or later, you\u2019ll encounter the regional stereotypes of Denmark. There is a kind of love-hate relationship between Jylland<\/span> and Sj\u00e6lland<\/span>. Jyder<\/span> (Jutlanders) call Sj\u00e6lland Dj\u00e6vle\u00f8en<\/span> (The Devil Island), and often make jokes about the whole island being \u201dCopenhagen\u201d or even a part of Sverige<\/span> (Sweden). To many people from the capital area, however, Jutland is a faraway land of dimwitted farmers. It\u2019s almost easier to take a plane to Thailand than getting on a train to provinsen<\/span> (\u201dthe province\u201d).<\/p>\n

Now I\u2019m being unfair towards people from places like Roskilde<\/span> or K\u00f8ge<\/span>, but the stereotypical sj\u00e6ll\u00e6nder<\/span> really is a k\u00f8benhavner<\/span>. He talks a lot<\/span>, at least twice as fast as his Jutish friend. He\u2019s smart<\/span> (clever) and fr\u00e6k <\/span>(cheeky). He likes to boast and exaggerate things with gestures and colourful language. He enjoys honing his swear-word skills. He\u2019s very direct, and never misses a chance to throw a witty remark at the lady in the bus. He finishes a lot of phrases with ik\u2019?<\/span> (not?)<\/p>\n

The stereotypical jyde<\/span> is rolig<\/span> (quiet) and sindig<\/span> (sober-minded) and a bit slow. He talks slowly and his dialect doesn\u2019t \u201djump\u201d so much as the Copenhagener\u2019s. He enjoys quiet life and nature. He rarely says things directly, preferring silent empathy. He finds the Zealandic way of communicating a bit arrogant or even effeminate. He uses words like tr\u00e6ls<\/span> (irritating, tiresome, laborious) and k\u00f8benhavneri<\/span> (\u201dCopenhagen-ry\u201d, too much focus on the capital). He\u2019s very trustworthy. For that reason, the guy talking about gardens in Danish Television is often a jyde<\/span>.<\/p>\n

The stereotypical fynbo<\/span> is happy and meek. He has little of the Jutish melancholia or the Zealandic urgency. The Funen dialect is a bit singsong, so that\u2019s probably why we have this stereotype. Fyn is also a very nice and charming \u201dgarden\u201d island. As the saying goes in Danish: Fyn er fin.<\/span> (Funen is pretty.)<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know a lot of stereotypes about bornholmere<\/span>, people from Bornholm. They eat a lot of r\u00f8get sild<\/span> (smoked herring) and their dialect is almost Swedish, due to the fact that this part of Denmark lies closer to Sweden than the rest of the country.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

BTW. Do you know the comic Scandinavia and the World<\/strong>? It is drawn by a Dane, and it makes a lot of fun about stereotypes! It\u2019s mostly about countries, but here\u2019s<\/a> <\/strong>a drawing of the different Danish regions! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"\"

\u201dJylland, du er hovedlandet\u201d. Jutland, you\u2019re the main country. Ever since Danish national bard H.C. Andersen wrote those words (in 1859), people from Sj\u00e6lland (Zealand) have resented him for it. Andersen himself was from Fyn (Funen), the middle island, but spent most of his career in K\u00f8benhavn, so why couldn\u2019t he see that the island…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":1136,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[238004,251410,252462,252461,361035,361199,360676,351830,351831,361367,351829,351828],"class_list":["post-1135","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bornholm","tag-copenhagen","tag-funen","tag-fyn","tag-jutland","tag-jylland","tag-kobenhavn","tag-satw","tag-scandinavia-and-the-world","tag-sjaelland","tag-stereotype","tag-zealand"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/76"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1135"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1138,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1135\/revisions\/1138"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/danish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}