Standing Out In Denmark: Discovering the Jante Law

One of the biggest differences between Denmark and the US is also the most subtle. You won’t notice it right away, but it will start to sneak up on you as you begin your job, talk to your new Danish friends and coworkers, or send your child to daycare or school. This difference has a name: janteloven, the Law of Jante (or, more succinctly, the Jante Law).

Janteloven was created by Danish-Norwegian author Aksel Sandemose in 1933 in his novel A Fugitive Crosses His Tracks (En flyktning krysser sitt spor). {{Side note: I find it so incredibly fascinating that something with this much cultural influence came from a novel. Ah, the power of literature.}} The novel is about a small Danish town called Jante which abides by these 10 – rather harsh – laws:

1. You’re not to think you are anything special.
2. You’re not to think you are as good as we are.
3. You’re not to think you are smarter than we are.
4. You’re not to convince yourself that you are better than we are.
5. You’re not to think you know more than we do.
6. You’re not to think you are more important than we are.
7. You’re not to think you are good at anything.
8. You’re not to laugh at us.
9. You’re not to think anyone cares about you.
10. You’re not to think you can teach us anything.

These can all be boiled down to one sentiment: you are no better than anyone else here.

It’s claimed that in writing these laws Sandemose was inspired by a belief that existed in ancient Norse culture that to preserve one’s happiness one should be cautious and humble. In the book, these laws ensure harmony and stability in the town. But interestingly, it sounds like Sandemose wrote these 10 laws in a moment of Danish irony and actually meant them as a criticism of the restrictions of narrow-minded, small town life. Which begs the question, how did it go from a criticism of this way of thinking to being a defining cultural norm of Scandinavian society?

Because the general gist of these laws can still be felt in Scandinavia and in Denmark.

I was recently listening to a podcast by Kay Xander Mellish about raising children in Denmark, and in it she raises the issue of the Jante Law. In Denmark, children learn these rules very early in life. The whole podcast is very interesting and you should go listen to it all (it’s fairly short at only 5 minutes), but the most interesting part for our discussion is this:

The Jante Law is part of all Danish education. There’s no elite education here, no advanced, or gifted and talented programs. If your child is better than the others at a certain subject, his job is to help the students who are not as good.

If you come from a very competitive society – the US, the UK, China, India – that can be a bit of a shock. There’s no competition in Danish education. The kids work in groups. There are no competitive schools you have to fight to get into. There’s almost no standardized testing until the kids are 15 or 16. And there are relatively few tests within the daily school lessons.

In Danish school, your child’s social life is considered what’s most important. Does she have friends? Can she get along with the other children in the class? Does he like to go to school? Does he fit in?

The idea is that if a child is socially comfortable in school, if he or she wants to go to school, then academic success will follow.

No advanced or gifted classes?!, I hear you Americans saying. No awards for being the best reader or the most participating or the one with the best attendance?! This is at the heart of what is so difficult for many Americans to understand about Denmark because it’s such a fundamental difference, and it shapes every aspect of life from how we raise our children to how we interact with our coworkers to what we expect out of our governments.

You must understand that above all else, Danes value equality and community. It’s like they took the principle of democracy – which plays as equally important a role in Danish history as it does in American history – but instead of running with the “individual freedom” part they ran with the “equality” part.

How does this affect every day life? Let me give you some examples. Everyone does some kind of sport in Denmark. If you admit that you, in fact, do not like to run and don’t play a sport, your are met with disbelieving blank stares. And then you are nicely but persistently asked to join 1000 different sporting activities. It’s a nice gesture, really. You’re being included in the most Danish way possible. Plus, everyone knows you’re supposed to exercise. But. It feels a bit like peer pressure, which coming from the US immediately raises a huge red JUST SAY NO flag.

Another example. There are a few consumer products in Denmark that it seems like everyone has: Kahler vases, PH lamps. Almost as if, if you’re really Danish you’ll have these items in your house. You will also notice a similarity in how people dress. If you’re a girl, it’s skinny jeans, black leather jacket, fancy athletic sneakers, hair in a messy bun.

None of this is bad. Indeed, you see people buying the same things or wearing the same clothes all the time in the US. It’s human nature. Hell, we own two Kahler vases and an imitation PH lamp. (The real thing is freaking expensive!) And I’m thinking of buying my own leather jacket.

But.

I can count the number of times I’ve seen someone with brightly dyed hair, unusual facial piercings, distinctive clothes – anything that would visually mark them as different – on one hand. It’s such a shock coming from a country where everyone is trying their hardest to be unique and special. One of a kind. Different. I mean, come on, I come from the land of Lady Gaga for crying out loud!

We’re desperate to be different.

It’s kind of comforting to not have to worry about being special or unique, to be OK with being normal. To feel good about being normal. There’s a whole school of thought out there about Generation Y (aka The Millennials aka me) that says that the reason they’re so screwed up is because their parents told them that they were inherently special, that they would go on to do big and special things. Then they turned 25 and found out that really they’re just the same as everyone else, and it hit them hard. And thus the quarter life crisis was born. It’s a lot of pressure, to be special, to be unique. And as we all know if you try to be different you just end up doing it in predictable ways, ways that actually make you the same as everyone else who’s also trying to be different. Thus the punks, goths, and hipsters were born.

Plus, from a fundamental belief in equality comes the social welfare state, the drive to ensure that every citizen is educated equally, the belief that everyone deserves to be healthy and happy. Here, the care you get from every doctor, the education you get from every school is (theoretically) equally good. Denmark doesn’t have a large gap between the wealthy and the poor like there is in the US. (Ah the god ol’ 1%.) We say in the US that every American has the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” but I don’t know that we really mean it. Or rather, we emphasize the pursuit bit rather than the actual achievement of happiness. You’re free to try and be happy as much as you want, but you’ll do it on your own. Good luck with that.

But.

It’s still hard to adjust to, the idea that you don’t want to call attention to your differences. And sometimes I find myself wondering about some of its other implications. If there’s such pressure to fit in, are bullying and peer pressure problems in Danish schools? How is it handled? Do people in Denmark even think about peer pressure in the same way that I do? Questions like that. Sounds like I need to do some more research and some more investigating.