Photo by Chris Steele-Perkins/Magnum is a psychologist and cultural facilitator. She lives in Copenhagen, Denmark. For newcomers to Denmark, many things don’t always make sense.
Parents leave sleeping babies outside cafés. Young children cycle to school alone. Primary schools don’t do homework, exams and competition.
Success is quietly downplayed rather than celebrated. Meetings are spent revisiting the last meeting, planning the current one, eating together and preparing for the next meeting. Decisions are painfully slow, and everything is scheduled and regulated.
For me, and for many others who have made Denmark our home, much of everyday life initially seemed to defy the logic by which successful societies are supposed to function. Marrying into Danish culture, and being a psychologist, I was intrigued by this, but had stopped worrying only when our eldest daughter reached junior high. Until then, I had to reluctantly trust the Danish line of reasoning that appears not only in schools, but across everyday life: you must first feel tryg.
What does it mean to feel tryg? The word is often translated as ‘safe’, but that is not quite right. It does not primarily refer to the absence of threat.
Rather, it points to the presence of a particular state: the body at ease – calm, relaxed, with a sense of familiar warmth. Like the relaxed feeling of a child resting in her parents’ arms. In Danish, feeling tryg is not assumed to rise spontaneously.
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