A Danish sabbatical

One of the advantages of being an Oxford don, as  mentioned before in TheArticle, is the assurance that one can take a sabbatical leave every seventh year. I was due to have one in 1972. I chose the Technical University of Denmark. They had a Department which did research very similar to our own. I was glad to accept a one-year Visiting Professorship. I arrived (with wife and two children on board) at Copenhagen at the beginning of September 1972. We were offered a flat in the centre of Copenhagen, free of charge, a mere walking distance from the National Theatre. Interestingly, some time ago a tenant of that flat had been Hans Christian Andersen.

Having settled in, I was asked to register at a certain police station. I found the place. I tried to say a few words in Danish. They replied in English. I was sent up to the first floor, where there was a small office womanned by a stunning twenty-something.  Within a few minutes another Danish beauty entered bringing coffee and biscuits. She put them on a small table and left discreetly.

The first beauty invited me to sit at the table. Clichéd though it may be, I must admit that she was not just a pretty face. We started to chat. Her English turned out to be better than mine. She asked me about England. I told her that I loved the country, that it was a real democracy. Yes, she said, real democracies are those which have a monarch at the top. I agreed. She asked me what I was planning to do in Denmark. I said that apart from doing research at the University, I wanted to learn about the Danish way of life. “Marvellous,” said she, “I will give you a few addresses where you can, free of charge, study the language and learn about Danish society.”

Then she turned to more mundane matters. She told me that our family would be fully covered by the Danish health service and asked me whether she should find a GP for us. The whole interview might have lasted twenty minutes. It gave me a feeling that we were welcome in the country.

At the University, within a few weeks, I got involved with designs for a European satellite project. I found also, quite quickly, the organisation responsible for teaching Danish to foreigners. After a few sessions we, my wife and myself, realised that sadly we would never learn to speak Danish. It didn’t seem to be a language capable of being spoken unless one learned it at one’s mother’s knee. The sounds — more like grunts — bore little resemblance to the letters on the page.

Let me give an example. You find a kind Dane who is willing to help you with the language. You take a book, point at a particular word, and ask your friend to pronounce it. He does so. The chances are that you are left with some doubt. Did he pronounce the word you pointed at, or the one next to it? Or above it, or maybe below it?

In contrast to actually speaking, Danish was not particularly difficult to read. After all, it was a Germanic language. I could interpolate between English and German, e.g. if a word ended with sh in English and with sch in German then you could be pretty confident that the corresponding Danish word would be identical, ending with sk.

I needed only a few weeks to get the gist of a political argument in a newspaper. I chose one that seemed to me the most objective, called Information. It was also the newspaper with the smallest circulation (I understand this is still the case a half-century later, although its circulation has somewhat increased).

Danish society was surprisingly formal. Not as formal as an Oxford college, but very formal nevertheless. We were invited by several colleagues. The first rule was, be punctual. The pattern was always the same. An equal number of men and women. Then there were rules for everything else – the rules for the gentleman sitting to the right of a lady were different from those for the gentleman seated to her left.  Guests could drink only once the host had raised his glass (a rule we often forgot).

Our most embarrassing experience happened when we were invited to the traditional Christmas dinner at the University. We were late, as usual. Not by much. Just by 10 minutes. We saw maybe a hundred people in their finery, standing with a filled glass in their hands, and then, suddenly all the hundred dignitaries turned their heads at us. We were shown to our seats with glacial courtesy and our glasses were filled. Nobody made a move. It was like in an old cinema when the film reel had broken and only one frame could be seen. After a minute or two the Vice-Chancellor (whatever the Danish equivalent was)  finished the toast interrupted by our arrival. Nobody ever mentioned the embarrassment we caused. Fortunately, there was no repeat. The Christmas dinner was the only occasion when all the senior staff were invited to a dinner.

Come the summer of 1973 and we bought privately a small sailing boat. The seller taught us to sail in the Oresund and, in addition, when a month later some repair was needed, he did it all for us. We became quite good friends. He was a tax exile. He lived in Denmark but worked in Sweden.

Tax was very often discussed at lunches in the University over some smorre brod. Everybody agreed that taxes were too high. In fact, they were. The marginal tax rate of a Professor at the University was well over 60%. Public spending was high, hospitals, schools, nursery schools were good and efficient. Parks, swimming pools, skating rinks were kept in an excellent condition. It was grudgingly admitted by all those complaining that tax revenue was well spent by the government or local authorities. Our family happened to be in a fantastic position. As a visitor I did not have to pay taxes, but I could enjoy all the advantages of high taxation.

The academics (and many other professionals) may have been against high tax rates, but none were as naïve as to believe that the rate could be zero. None, that is, other than a certain Mogens Glistrup.  Just a month before we arrived, he founded a new party: the Freedom Party.  He meant freedom from taxation. The party did well in the 1973 election. They obtained 16% of the seats.  It is not clear whether Glistrup was mad or just pretended to be mad. His own open tax cheating and his later racist comments earned him three years in prison, After his release he was again elected to the Folketing (Parliament), though he was no longer influential.

But maybe even his unorthodox views on tax could be seen as relatively normal compared to his opinions on defence. He suggested replacing the Danish Ministry of Defence by an answering machine that had a brief message of two words only. The words were in Russian. They said: “We surrender.”

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