The Tribe

I went to a very interesting seminar titled "The Danes...(are weird)." The turnout was fairly large which obviously meant the title of the event struck a cord for those of us expats living in Denmark. However, the most impressive part was the fact that the speaker was an anthropologist looking at the culture from a sociological perspective.

He used humor and humility to describe situations and experiences expats often have a hard time understanding from a historical and scientific point of view. He described the Danes as a tribe of people with a special language of their own that is very difficult to imitate and learn as an outsider.

The "weird" part about the people was that they trust one another more than any other culture. In fact, they almost treat each other like family. So when you're all one big family, you don't always use manners in the public sense of the word, which most of us outsiders have a hard time understanding.

However, since I have made an effort to learn their secret language, and think of them as all one giant tribe now, it has definitely helped me in situations where I would have been upset in the past. His final words were perhaps the most powerful: "You don't have to understand it or even like it, but you have to respect it."