In praise of shitty weather

You would think that climate could be ruled out as a large factor in the Danes’ happiness. The weather is generally considered one of the biggest drawbacks to the region. The end of July is the high season for reckoning and complaining. That’s when meteorologists tally up the number of “summer days” in what is supposed to be the warmest month. They are defined as those that reach 25 degrees Celsius (77 Fahrenheit) or above. This year the first one didn’t come until the 30^th, which also brought violent thunderstorms across the country. To be fair, June was a little warmer than usual, hitting 83 on one of the southernmost islands, but the summer still qualifies for the Danish epithet "shit weather."

Growing up mostly in the American northeast, I had been taught to avoid overdosing on the midday summer sun. I used to wear a hat and a t-shirt at the beach. When I moved to Denmark, I noticed people jumping onto a blanket on the lawn at the first bout of sunlight in the spring and sitting on benches with their faces tilted upwards and their eyes blissfully closed luxuriating in the hint of warmth. They aren’t getting a tan for reasons of vanity, I have since learned. Their bodies are starved for vitamin D. Apparently everyone in these latitudes has a deficiency if they don’t gobble supplements or get a time-share in Malaga. So after living here for 20 years, I’ve joined the crowd and begun stocking up on brief spells of sunshine and extra vitamins.

Go south

So people often lament that summer hardly came at all. They wear light jackets to work and carry an umbrella. Parents who spend the first five days of their vacation cooped up with stir-crazy kids in a small summerhouse on the west coast scramble to find last-minute cancellation tickets to southern Europe to salvage their vacation. The cool summers are also a big handicap for Danish tourism. When someone on Quora asks for recommendations of places to settle in Europe, Denmark doesn’t even register on the radar. Everyone thinks Mediterranean; no one retires northward.

And then there are the long winters when it’s dark when you leave for work in the morning and dark again when you go home. Even if you use your lunch break for a brisk walk in natural light, it’s weak because the sun is low on the horizon. So people go to solariums or use special lamps to recharge and stave off seasonal depression. Or spend the Christmas or winter holidays in Thailand. In the spring and fall, it’s possible to tank up on sun without traveling so far; having five or six weeks of paid vacation makes it easier.

Chilling naturally

But the Nordic climate has some advantages. The long, light summer evenings are comfortable and pleasant, sometimes charming. On the midsummer holiday, Saint John’s Eve, people gather round a bonfire and listen to a speech by a local politician and sing songs. There’s no need for air conditioning, which on visits to the US now often seems to run more than necessary and far too cool, besides consuming an unconscionable amount of energy since the demographic shift to the Southwest in the past 50 years.

Denmark’s climate stays in relatively narrow range. It’s not especially cold in the winter, and heavy snowfalls are rare. That enables people to bicycle to work year-round if they keep their rain gear at the ready. It doesn’t appear that global warming has raised the temperature significantly; rather, it is making the weather unpredictable, bringing spates of unseasonable conditions along with some storms that seem more extreme than before.

Be careful what you wish for

Storms here mean mainly high winds, without or without precipitation. They cause flooding on some coastal stretches and bring down tree branches. But they’re still moderate in comparison with the extremes in America – the hurricanes, tornadoes, huge snowstorms, floods, mudslides, sweltering heat waves and droughts that lead to forest fires – weather of biblical proportions that wreaks havoc, kills people, extracts great costs, and makes credible the notion that a stern god is keeping track of our misdeeds.

Perhaps Denmark’s disrespected weather fits into the “low expectations” theory of Danish happiness. In the same way that incomes cluster around the median level, it doesn’t get as good or as bad as in many other places. If the base scenario is that the weather sucks, then any improvement feels like a bonus.

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