those happy danes and one slightly disgruntled guardian reader

recently, the danes topped yet another survey of happiness - this time, one conducted by the UN. the guardian published a piece by a freelance british journalist who lives in copenhagen in order to explain glorify the happiness of the danes (or more accurately of a possibly delusional brit living in denmark). the guardian piece is categorized under news » world news » denmark, but it reads like a blog entry. it's the extremely personal bloggy-style view of one freelance brit journalist with a small child (and even features a photo of said journalist and her child) who happens to live in copenhagen.

while much of what she says is true - denmark is a child- and family-friendly country, design, especially of everyday objects, is awesome and common in every home, and you can swim in the harbor in copenhagen. but (you knew there was a but coming), none of this explains in the least why the danes top out these happiness lists year after year. it explains why cathy strongman, transplanted brit, is happy in denmark. that and they surely slipped her some seriously good drugs when she gave birth to that child because she has a fanciful description of her birth experience that nearly made me spit my coffee all over my keyboard. some tale of a maternity hotel to which she was apparently sent and tended to for three days after the birth of her child. i'm pretty sure the maternity hotel was her own home, and the attending, helpful nurse a drug-addled hallucination, as they're pushing mothers out the door if they can possibly stand and nobody gets coddled in the hospital these days.

i question as well the availability of a bagel in copenhagen as i've never seen one, tho' i grant her that it would likely set you back ten quid if there was such a thing. but perhaps a bagel is different in the mind of a brit than it is in the mind of an american. i think it may just have been a bread roll.

and then no self-respecting danish government institution (like the "local college" (which i'm pretty sure is copenhagen university) she cites) would have eames chairs when they could have arne jakobsen -  danes are loyal to danish design, especially where public funds are concerned.

and as for the well-dressed danes she mentions, i'll bet you anything that if you walked up behind them and listened in, they'd be speaking swedish. she's right that starbucks is (sadly) confined to the airport, but local cafes and shops are not as common as she says, it must be that she just isn't familiar with which brands are ubiquitous in denmark (baresso coffee, all of the bestseller brands of clothing, company's clothing stores, h&m). there are small streets of independent shops but i guarantee they are not paying affordable rents.  and even the cutest of them are packed with the same rice and sia baskets and frames as the one next door.

but the bottom line is that i can't fathom what all of this has to do with the danish position on the big happy list. not that i necessarily have an answer for that either, as i don't think you can necessarily SEE the happiness of the danes on their faces. nor do they go around acting smugly content. in fact, i'd call it a well-concealed inner happiness that apparently manifests itself best when they fill out surveys.

however, the article is worrying in that it's a personal, bloggy-style blog post masquerading as journalism. and as much as i love the blog as a genre, a blog is not a newspaper. newspapers have blogs and should have blogs and this type of article has its place on such a blog. but it didn't belong in the news section of the guardian. and the guardian should know that.