BARE LEGS

It was sunny Spring weather yesterday, so I decided to wear shorts to do my rubbish collecting. Not swimming trunks-type shorts; nevertheless, my legs were bare from above the knee to above the ankle. For some reason, this provoked comments of amazement from both my fellow collectors and various people I met on my round. How would I survive?

This is not the first time I have thought Danes a bit mollycoddled when it comes to the weather. Once when I was a football trainer, I sent my flock of 12-year olds out to play a practice game in February in shorts (Scandinavia treats football as a summer game, so there is a long winter break from the end of October to the beginning of March). This decision brought down the wrath of furious parents wanting to know how I could possibly send little Jesper out in such weather, it was close to child cruelty. When I protested that I had played football in shorts throughout the winter during the whole of my youth, there were gasps of disbelief.

Danes like to think of themselves as rugged Vikings. Paraphrasing Arnold Schwarzenegger a bit, I would say instead "tøsedrenge", a Danish word that literally means "girlie boys".

Walter Blotscher