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Welcome to Denmark. We’re Going to Offend You

Mikael Colville-Andersen · 15 Oct 2026

Read the piece on colvilleandersen.medium.com ↗

5 korrents from this piece ↓

Mikael Colville-Andersen did not write this page.

Every claim below was made in this piece, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.

  1. Our reading

    Humour is one of the main ways Danish society maintains its cohesion.

    Their wordsDanish society is built on a remarkable degree of collective identity, social cohesion and mutual trust. And I think our humour is one of the ways we maintain that cohesion.

  2. Our reading

    Foreigners can live in Copenhagen for years without mastering Danish; English is a fine lingua franca.

    Their wordsI have no problem with people who live in Copenhagen for years and don’t master Danish. English is a great lingua franca in a modern European city.

  3. Our reading

    Joking about a tragedy is not trivialising it; there is no such thing as "too soon".

    Their wordsHumour is often precisely how we deal with uncomfortable things. Death, fear, uncertainty, stupidity, tragedy. Making a joke about something doesn’t automatically mean we’re trivialising it. Sometimes it’s how we process it.

  4. Our reading

    People who move to another country should make the effort to understand its culture, humour included.

    Their wordsIf you’ve chosen to live in another culture, surely part of the experience is making an effort to understand how that culture works? Not necessarily agreeing with everything, but at least recognising that your own cultural expectations aren’t universal.

  5. Our reading

    The most easily offended person in the room should not decide what everyone else may laugh at.

    Their wordsI certainly don’t want to live in a society where the most easily offended person in the room gets to decide what everybody else can laugh at.

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The other pieces are the ones whose claims are worded most like this one's. That measures language, not agreement: they may argue the opposite.