How To Live In Denmark » Podcasts

If you are an international who lives in Denmark, or someone who wants to, you have to learn the Danish way of dealing with conflict. This might be with a colleague, or your upstairs neighbors, or the authorities at the commune. In these cases, it’s very important not to lose your temper or raise your voice. And this can be tricky if the culture you come from, your culture of origin, is a passionate culture. Denmark is not a passionate culture. If you hear someone talking about their passion here, it's almost always some sort of hobby, or the summer home they have been fixing up for years. Their passion is almost never a person or a cause. And they generally use the English or French word passion, not lidenskab, which is the rather clumsy Danish translation. So, the keywords to handling conflict here are not strength and passion, they are humor and equality. You have to take the approach that you and the person you disagree with are equals. Your counterparty isn’t someone you can push around, but they’re also