I am in Denmark and suddenly all the Christmas traditions make so much more sense.
Lights on trees and houses - because it's DARK all the time, of course. Duh. I hadn't realised, though... it gets dark at 3pm here at this time of year. So some fairy lights glimmering on hedges and trees is certainly a welcome sight when you're walking home in the dark.
Christmas trees - because there are no leaves on anything but the firs and pine trees! I live in a country where even in winter most of the trees keep their leaves, so I really didn't appreciate how important that greenness was until now, how worth celebrating it is.
The houses are like fairytale houses here, with huge pointy roofs. There is a real honest-to-goodness dark forest just near my mother's house, where the pine trees grow so thickly you can't see the sunlight even in summer. There is also a Viking burial mound nearby. The graves lay open and empty, long since robbed of their riches, massive stone slabs framing dead leaves.
Yesterday I went to a graduation ceremony for the Danish language school mum goes to, to see some of her friends graduate. It was so bizarre to see her speaking and understanding a language I know barely a word of. She's been working so hard at this, it's pretty amazing. Her friends are from all over – Iran, Poland, Serbia, Thailand – and most of them, unlike the average Dane, know very little English. So they have no choice but to all converse in Danish together. I love that – how you just have to get by, no matter how dodgy your grammar or word choices. That's communication.
I took the bus to the nearest city, Århus, today. Went to Aros, the huge art gallery, where I took in some Danish art, and the Women's Museum, which was completely my kind of thing. I liked the corsetry and underwear displays, the information about the Danish feminist movement, and the part where you could try on hats.
It's so different here. Only 5% of women continue to stay home after maternity leave – the rest go back to work. Women and men are evenly represented in politics. All medical and educational expenses are FREE – but taxes are over 50%! The mind boggles.
More Viking stuff tomorrow I hope. YAY.
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