The author: Mikkel Hougaard Orlovski is a Danish business consultant and associate partner in ConnectingCultures. He specialises in cultural intelligence, DEI, and cross-cultural collaboration in international organisations of all sizes, with a special interest in entrepreneurship having been owner/founder/independent for three-quarters of his career.
I was recently invited on TV2 with Daniele Bresemann Iannella from the Italian supermarket Supermarco in Copenhagen, to offer a cultural explanation to his experiences with customers who do not respond when he greets them and not really registering the person behind the checkout. What struck me was how familiar this sounds from conversations I have with internationals working in Denmark:
You arrive at the lunch table, but the conversation continues without an invitation for you to join, maybe even in Danish. You pass colleagues in the corridor, but they do not greet you. Meetings begin with the agenda and end with everyone disappearing before you can ask how their weekend went. Nothing openly hostile happens, but you leave with an unpleasant feeling: did anybody even notice that I was there?
One workshop attendee described it neatly: “There is a general ‘aura’ of niceness here in Denmark, but most of the time, I feel invisible.”
Daniele described it from behind the counter, and international professionals describe it from behind their laptop.
The Danish courtesy of leaving you alone
I have previously described belonging in Denmark as a self-service process. Much of this rests on a well-intentioned assumption: you are independent, competent, and we assume you will ask if something is unclear, and that you will join the conversation if you have something to say.
From inside that cultural logic, actively drawing you in seems unnecessary, even intrusive.
Culturally I explain this through the combination of everyday security and our strong sense of autonomy. In a society where interpersonal trust and safety is assumed, we feel less need to establish a connection with strangers through conversation, and so we never really learn the dynamics and benefits of small talk.
The difficulty begins when we assume that giving you space communicates that we trust you, which for many internationals, it doesn’t.
Welcome. Would you mind peeling these?
Danish hospitality offers a useful illustration: You arrive for dinner, but nobody has dressed up – the children are not assembled for a ceremonial greeting, and you may even be handed a potato peeler and asked to help in the kitchen.
The intended message is affectionate: You are no trouble at all, so we do not have to put on a formal performance.
In cultures with more demonstrative shows of hospitality, a proper welcome might mean giving you the best chair, serve an impressive and slightly exaggerated amount of food, with constant reminders for you to eat more. Your jokes may even receive a bigger laugh than they deserve…
Most Danes would find this overwhelming, even slightly theatrical and fake, and we can become suspicious of your intentions.
But this is exactly the blind spot. When visible effort for others feels awkward, we can forget that making an effort – and showing it – is precisely how someone else recognises that their presence matters.
Both Danish homes and workplaces vary considerably, but the overall mismatch in expectations helps explain why Danish informality in the workplace can feel like indifference.
Understanding the intention can help prevent the quiet encounters from feeling like rejections. But it cannot make a seemingly inaccessible conversation inclusive. Being trusted to participate means little if you do not understand the linguistic or cultural ways of entering the conversation – and if it doesn’t make you feel trusted.
How to give the relationship a small kickstart
One approach is to give the relationship a small, practical starting point, such as asking a colleague for advice on something low-risk:
Which coffee machine is worth walking to? What type of preparation does this kind of meeting require? Who in procurement would be useful to know? Is there a café nearby suitable for client meetings?
You are making your interest in contact clear through a request they can easily respond to. Remember to ask one person at a time though – a general question to a room can leave it unclear who should respond, where a personal question gives someone a clear opportunity to help, and gives you both a first conversation to return to.
Later, tell them how it went, thank them for the recommendation, ask a follow-up and share something useful yourself. Gradually you can develop more complicated questions.
There is no guarantee of a closer relationship, but the colleague who recommended a café now has a reason to ask whether you liked it, which gives you a reason to greet each other. Repeated contact can over time become a relationship that no longer needs a task to justify it.
Workplaces must make welcome visible
This gives internationals something to try, but it should not transfer responsibility for inclusion to the person feeling excluded.
Workplaces should remember that good onboarding involves more than a computer, a desk and “just ask if you need anything”. It includes prepared introductions, explicit invitations, and curiosity about someone’s experience.
At lunch, notice who has joined and use a language and topic they can participate in. In meetings, leave room for people to check-in as humans beings, before jumping to the agenda – where someone has to invite them into the conversation. I believe that we can preserve autonomy while showing that someone’s presence and perspectives are welcome.
Denmark is one of the most trusting nations in the world. Yet that trust is not always felt by our international colleagues. We autonomy and the freedom to speak up for granted, so we feel little need for acknowledgements or explicit invitations to discuss or connect. For people accustomed to more visible expressions of trust however, not being met with curiosity can turn our intention to establish informality into a feeling of being distrusted.
