what we have in common with the Danes
June 18, 2011
We’ve met two Danes through a friend, and they’ve graciously lent us their bicycles, a power adaptor (ours is useless) and a hairdryer for E. It turns out they too have a conservative government looking to get tough on foreign policy. E mentioned the fighter jets and they laughed. “Yes, our government is buying those too.” I was curious to know what language they spoke when they visited Norway or Sweden. “Can everyone speak Dutch and Norwegian and Swedish and French and German or do you all just rely on English?” They said that they speak Danish in Sweden and the Swedes answer in Swedish. They couldn’t necessarily speak Swedish, but they knew enough to understand. As we were leaving they joked that we were probably heading for a war over arctic sovereignty. “Maybe they’ll find oil in Greenland.” We laughed. It sounded like the butt of a joke on South Park: The Canadian-Danish war.
