Sea Stallion returns to Denmark

At three o’clock next Thursday afternoon Dubliners will be treated to an extraordinary spectacle. The Viking ship Sea Stallion, which has been on display at the National Museum in Collins Barracks, will be lifted 50 metres into the air by a giant crane. Then the huge vessel will be swung out over the three-storey museum building and deposited in the nearby Croppy’s Acre. In the middle of the night it will be moved to the River Liffey, prior to its long sea journey back to Denmark.

The Sea Stallion was built at Roskilde, the ancient capital of Denmark, and now a quiet town at the head of a long narrow fjord. About 900 years ago ships were scuttled in the fjord to protect the harbour from pirates. In 1962 five of the wrecks were discovered, one of which turned out to have Irish timbers; it had been built in Dublin about the year 1042. A replica was constructed. It required 7,000 iron rivets and 340 trees had to be felled. On September 4, 2004, the ‘Havhingsten fra Glendalough’ was christened by Queen Margrethe.

Source: Irish Examiner

Oldest Parrot Fossil Found In Scandinavia?

The fictional dead Scandinavian parrot that an unhappy customer tried to return in a famous Monty Python TV sketch may have a 54-million-year-old real-life ancestor, if a new study is to be believed. An ancient bird found on Denmark's Isle of Mors has already been nicknamed the "Danish blue" in honor of the fictional "Norweigan blue" breed of parrot featured in the 1970s British comedy show.
The fossil—a large wing bone called the humerus—represents the oldest and most northerly remains of a parrot ever discovered, the study authors say.
Parrot fossils are scarce, because their small, light bones tend to be destroyed before they can become fossilized.
The discovery suggests that parrots evolved in the Northern Hemisphere before branching into wildly diverse species in the southern tropics.
"I had been looking at a lot of parrot bones before this fossil ever came to us, and when I saw it I really started wondering if it might be a parrot," said study co-author David Waterhouse, who researched the fossil between 2002 and 2006 on a scholarship with University College Dublin.

Scandivanian Tropics
Today no wild parrots live in northern Europe. The birds are mostly confined to Earth's southern tropical regions.
During the Monty Python sketch, the shopkeeper tries to explain to the customer that the reason the parrot isn't moving is because it is "pining for the fjords."
But the newfound Danish blue would have flown over a decidedly more lush and tropical Scandinavia—one that resembled the habitat of modern parrots.
During this time Europe was in the midst of a warm period, and a lagoon covered much of the continent.

Source: National Geographic

How to Behave in Denmark

1. Behave in a polite, reserved manner, especially among people you do not know. Avoid being loud and boisterous or going out of your way to stand out, as Danes are humble about their accomplishments and expect others to be the same. The Danish expect people to behave courteously, taking care to follow spoken and unspoken rules. In addition, Danes are generally not afraid to call someone out when they are acting inappropriately. Keep a low profile to avoid a socially uncomfortable incident.

2. Greet others in a casual, polite way, shaking hands and making eye contact with each person you address. Go out of your way to shake hands with women first, and use your first name when you introduce yourself (unless it's a formal business situation). Before you depart, shake hands with each person one more time.

3. Familiarize yourself with Danish dining etiquette. When you're dining with a group, wait to begin eating your food until someone toasts with "Skol," which means "Salute" or "Cheers." Do not take more food than you can eat, as Danes do not like to see food wasted. Instead, take only what you know you'll finish and remember you can always ask for seconds. Finally, remember that the Danish try not to mix business with pleasure, so avoid discussing the workplace when you're at a social gathering.

4. Learn some Danish to help you get around Denmark. Kwintessential Cross-Cultural Solutions provide users a list of helpful Danish phrases, along with a pronunciation guide (see Resources below).

5. Do not be surprised if the Danish speak English in their work environment and Danish when they socialize. Nearly 99 percent of Denmark residents speak Danish as their primary language, so listen carefully to pick up key phrases and vocabulary, even if you don't understand everything.

Source: eHOW

Animal brothels legal in Denmark

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Row over Denmark court veil ban

Danish diplomats to Muslim countries are preparing themselves for another wave of anti-Danish protests after the government announced it would bar judges from wearing headscarves and similar religious or political symbols in courtrooms.

Although the ban will include crucifixes, Jewish skull caps and turbans as well as headscarves, the move is seen as being largely aimed at Muslim judges.

It comes after pressure from the Danish People's Party (DPP), known for its anti-Muslim rhetoric.

Earlier this month, the party produced a widely published poster showing a female judge wearing an all-encompassing burka.

The accompanying text argues that a Muslim headscarf is more than just a feather-light piece of clothing. Rather, it suggests, it is a symbol of submission and tyranny.

The final line of text reads: "Give us Denmark back."

Critics have argued that the burka imagery is misleading as the head covering is already banned from Danish courtrooms.

More: BBC

Adapting to the Danes

• Be direct. Directness and frankness in communication is seen as a sign of sincerity and honesty. When you gain their respect, they’ll start liking you for it.
• Be yourself. Personality and individuality is welcomed in Denmark.
• Compliment them on their country and culture. They’re a small country and like to feel that people appreciate them, or at least acknowledge their impact on the world.
• Hop on a bike and you’ll immediately feel part of the cycling community. Just don’t do anything stupid, they will not love you for blocking cycle paths or riding in the wrong direction.
• Make a joke or two about Swedish culture but don’t take sides.
• Learn a few Danish words. Your efforts to pronounce their language can help to break the ice and are sure to cause a few laughs.
• Don’t be intimidated by them. Their bark is worse than their bite.
• If doing business, get it in writing. According to fellow Scandinavians, the Danes are known as the best traders and the toughest business negotiators in the region.

Source: Worlds apart: The Danish - Swedish culture clash

Mobiles and pregnancy just don’t mix

May make your child into a loner

Research of over 13,000 children in Denmark found mothers using their mobile phones between two and three times a day raised the risk of their children developing emotional or relationship problems.
The study, which is the first of its type, was carried out by the universities of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and Aarhus, Denmark, and also found use of mobile phones by children under the age of seven also had an adverse effect on behaviour.
The study tested 13,159 mothers with children born in Denmark in the 1990s, concerning their use of mobiles during gestation. Given that mobile use was far from today’s levels of ubiquity, about half had used them very rarely or not at all, allowing direct comparison.

Handset problems
The findings showed mothers using the handsets regularly were 54 per cent more likely to give birth to offspring with behavioural problems, and the chances of these instances increased with exposure to the radiation.
Use of the phone by young children also increased the problem by up to 80 per cent.
The scientists involved in the study were surprised at the results, and were unable to find a direct biological reason for the findings. They added other factors - such as the unavailability of phone-prone mothers - might help explain the findings, so caution should be exercised.
The research is to be published in the July issue of the journal Epidemiology.

Source: The Independent

Observations About Denmark

--Traveling to another country when your currency is at record lows is much like playing a sport: You can read about it, but until you actually undertake it for the first time you have no idea what the experience is really like. Regardless of how much or little money you have, five dollars for a bottle of soda is a lot.

--The Danes, or at least the Copenhageners, are the rudest Europeans I have yet encountered. Even my guidebook mentions it. One notorious manifestation is their unwillingness to form queues: they cut past you at the immigration line at the airport, at escalators, ticket lines, etc. Remind me again how it's we Americans who are uncouth and uncivilized?

--Copenhagen is the most pedestrian-hostile city I have ever encountered. The favoritism, however, is not toward automobiles but toward bicycles. Copenhagen is a remarkably flat city, so those who can — and that's many — bike everywhere. Everywhere.

--To make its bike lanes, which every street has (even side streets), the city cannabilized not the roads but the sidewalks, which are therefore excruciatingly narrow (and, to make matters worse, guess where all those bicyclists park all those bicycles). Meanwhile, the only people who don't bike everywhere are those who can't: the frail elderly, those pushing baby strollers, and (obviously) tourists stopping every five feet to gawk. The end result is that, to someone from a pedestrian-friendly like New York, trying to ambulate around center-city Copenhagen is closer to being in a cage than to being unleashed.

--Speaking of automobiles, the price of gasoline, currency-adjusted, is just under $9/gallon. But nobody seems to be complaining. See also, "bicycles." Just saying.

--The Scandinavian tongues are the linguistic equivalent of sadomasochism. I thought Dutch was hard to listen to; Danish is worse. (Yet I didn't feel that way about Icelandic, which is the "purest" Scandinavian language — i.e., most closely related to the original proto-language. Go figure.) Maybe it's dialectic, like the difference between High German and the intolerable Swiss dialect that even my Hessian mother can't make heads or tails of.

Source: A Stitch in Haste

Lego In Racism Poster Row

Danish toy maker Lego believes it has been wrongly accused of being racist by a UN anti-discrimination poster.
The poster shows what looks like one of the company's famous building blocks.
It reads "Racism takes many shapes" and shows a picture of a jigsaw puzzle next to a red brick. It was launched by the UN to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
"We feel that the message of this poster can be interpreted as if we are a racist company," Lego spokeswoman Charlotte Simonsen said.
"I don't know if that's what's intended, but it's definitely one way of interpreting it."
However, the UN said no affiliation to Lego was intended and apologised for the misunderstanding.
"The poster is in no way a comment on the specific situation in Denmark or on Lego," a spokesperson said.
"It is unfortunate that the poster has been interpreted as such."

Source: sky.com

Carlsberg to Raise $6.3 Billion in Rights Offering

Carlsberg A/S, the biggest Nordic brewer, plans to raise 30.5 billion kroner ($6.3 billion) in a stock sale to repay about half the debt taken on with the purchase of Scottish & Newcastle Plc's Russian assets.

Existing shareholders will be offered 76.3 million B shares for 400 kroner each, Valby, Denmark-based Carlsberg said overnight, about 40 percent below yesterday's closing price. The rights offer was near the 31.5 billion-kroner limit previously indicated, and is Denmark's biggest stock sale.

Carlsberg, which will sell stock rather than rely solely on debt for the deal to keep its investment-grade credit rating, rose in Copenhagen trading, erasing a 6.1 percent drop. Chief Executive Officer Joergen Buhl Rasmussen, who said the offering stirred ``a lot of interest'' from investors, bought Scottish & Newcastle with Heineken NV and split its assets. Carlsberg won full control of the largest brewer in Russia, where sales are rising as western Europe stagnates.

More on Bloomberg

Danish Pastries

Denmark, long the liberal, open society that welcomed immigrants, has done an about face. After being the symbolic envy of Universalists, of Socialists, of cultural liberalism, Denmark today has the strictest immigration policy in Europe.
The Muslim population in Denmark, constituting a mere 4% of the total, refuses to integrate, consumes 40% of the welfare, and constitutes a majority of the country’s convicted rapists. The Danes now acknowledge that their core values of personal liberty, free speech, equality for women and tolerance of other ethnic groups are incompatible with Islam as they know it.
Muslim leaders openly advocate introducing Islamic law in Denmark. Danes at the forefront of advocating free speech and Western values are subject to fatwas and increasingly violent attacks from the Muslim population.
This haven of tolerance and openness has opted for survival and rationality. For citizenship, the country now requires of new immigrants:

• 3 years of language classes
• tests on Denmark’s history, culture and language
• 7 years of residency prior to application
• proven job opportunities and commitment to work

New mosques will not be allowed to be built in Copenhagen. Assimilation will be actively promoted. The country that once courageously and righteously saved their 7,000 Jews from the Nazi death camps now is accused of racism.
America is no stranger to accusations of profiling, political incorrectness and racism. Yet Muslims worldwide still beat down our doors to gain immigration status to the U.S. - they tellingly do not do likewise to the majority of UN nations habitually accusing the U.S. of racism. When did Cuba or Russia, Syria or even Saudi Arabia, those bastions of tolerance and freedom, last receive a deluge of immigrant applications?
So we in the U.S. spend our time being sued by aggressive Imams testing nervous airlines. Open season has been declared on the West by demanding Islamist organizations hoping to force the government and our municipalities to kowtow into passive submission. We now clearly need footbaths in every university restroom. We also need two taxi lines at every airport - one for those with short skirts, dogs or alcoholic beverages and one for Shari’a-compliant Americans.
Yet little spunky Denmark is showing us and everyone the way. They opened their borders and their coffers to welcome Muslims, in a show of remarkable generosity and goodwill. Now, bruised and battered by an unappreciative, increasingly fundamentalist, and sadly uncompromising Muslim community, they are closing their doors and battening down the hatches.
It is only a matter of time before America’s similar generosities and freedoms are likewise pressured. It will not be too long before our remarkable naiveté, our exquisitely refined political correctness, are replaced by realistic pragmatism and a strong commitment to our own cultural survival, to uncompromising freedoms and our non-negotiable security and liberty.

A new found taste for Danish pastries perhaps?

From Family Security Matters

Hvidovre

It seems that I have constant readers, lately, on my blog. I appreciate that and I thank them for reading. One of them is IP 87.61.224.180 from Hvidovre (or places near this outskirt of Copenhagen). I don't understand why he don't comment my posts as long as he likes very much my blog. It seems that he agrees with my posts as long as he doesn't have any comment.
Anyhow, I thank him for visiting, and, of course, anybody who visits my site. I try to publish the most interesting things regarding Denmark.

Denmark selling the most expensive copies of GTA IV in the world?

Denmark’s largest games retailer, EBGames (a subsidiary of the US firm, Gamestop) is selling copies of Grand Theft Auto IV for 599kr on 360 and 549kr on PS3, which by our calculations makes them the most expensive copies of the game in the world.

That’s a whopping £63 for the Xbox 360 version and £57.75 for PS3.

In euros, our currency converter makes it €73,34 for PS3 and €80 for 360. And just so our American friends don’t feel left out, that’s a whopping $125.25 for 360 and $114.79 for PS3.

Source: Videogaming 247

Even in Sweden

This is a very good book about Racisms, Racialized Spaces, and the Popular Geographical Imagination, written by Allan Pred. A good eye-opener for foreigners in Scandinavia.

Allan Pred writes compellingly about the reawakening of racism throughout Europe at the end of the twentieth century–even in Sweden, a country widely regarded as the very model of social justice and equality. Many thousands of non-European and Muslim immigrants and refugees who took advantage of Sweden's generous immigration policies now find themselves the object of discrimination and worse.

Through the cascading juxtaposition of many voices, including his own, Pred describes the intensifying cultural racism of the 1990s, the proliferation of negative ethnic stereotypes, and the spatial segregation of the non-Swedish. He quotes the newspaper Dagens Nyheter: "It is high time that Sweden reconsider its self-image as the stronghold of tolerance" (July 21, 1998), and analyzes the strategies that allow people to maintain that self-image. Perhaps the greatest strength of Even in Sweden is that Pred gives to the social consequences of global economic restructuring some very specific faces and places and a multitude of expressions of human will, both ill and good.

Source: University of California

Denmark took by force a child from his parents

This is the story of a romanian mother who was forced to leave Denmark by no reasons and leave there his romanian born child. Denmark took away her child by force, in danish language this is called "Tvangsfjernelse". The story is in romanian language.

mai sunt doar 24 de ore si voi fii fortata sa mi abandonez unul din copii aicii in dk azii am fost instiintata si dusa intr o sectie de politie unde am fost anuntata ca sunt ilegal in dk si am dreptul la o zii pana la exploatare din tara eu si unul din copii ,suntem cetatenii romanii ,copii nascutii in romaniia ,am venit in dk pt reintregirea familiei da asa credam asa am depus acte dar am avut parte de un raspuns negativ statul cere sotului care e danez o garantie de 55000 de coroane neavand aceasta garantie totusii unul din copii primeste rezidenta in dk si eunul nu de ce?sunt fortata sa parasesc aceasta tara ,dar de ce imi cer sa mi abandonez copilul ?asta nu inteleg .nu am facut nimic ilegal in dk nu am avut nicii un ajutor din partea statului danez ,nu am cerut nimic nicii la munca nu am avut dreptul si nu am lucrat nicii o jumatate de ora la negru exact pt nu a comite nicii o ilegalitate ,si totusii sunt tratata ca oricare infractor ,am citit articolul de mai sus ,poate li sau luat dreptul parintistii din unele motive ,mie nu mi au gasit nimic in neregula nu am fost intrebata de nimic ,efectiv mi au luat un copil de ce?pt ca sunt cetatean strain ?pt ca nu am cerut drepturii atuncii cand am fost nevoitii sa platim o consultatie medicala cu 300 de coroane?am facut ca totul sa fim corectii ,am dus copilul la sc in dk 2 anii acum il exploateaza de ce?cel mic nu a avut un loc la gradinita in dk timp de 2 anii de ce ?in dk nu avem loc ca emigrantii in dk isi ia statul ce vrea fara a tine cont ca destrama familii oamenii in dk sunt consideratii obiecte mai sunt cateva ceasurii pana la exploazare mea dar sunt mama nu pot abandona copilul, ce poate fii mai rau ?