I reasoned that you can’t be funny if you’re freezing. You can’t be creative when your teeth are chattering.
The Riviera winter temperatures were okay, but I was on a quest for real winter sun and ended up on an island in the Caribbean.
My escape made me think of Paul Gauguin who married a Dane and found himself painting snowscapes in Copenhagen.
Those paintings can be seen in Copenhagen at the Glyptotek Museum. His danish palate was white, brown and black. But he escaped to Martinique and Tahiti and his canvases exploded with colour.
His paintings became mysterious, sensual and downright crazy.
So, with this in mind, I wondered if I would benefit from the heat to write my crazy comedy?
Is sunshine the key to creativity?
Statistics prove otherwise as the majority of Nobel prize winners for literature have come from northern countries – the US, UK, France, and Germany.
Even Denmark has 3. One obvious exception is Hemingway, who won for“ The Old Man and The Sea“ which he wrote on the island of Cuba.
But it must be said, his work was never funny!
To put all this into context, let me explain that when I first came to live in Denmark it was the month of January.
The snow was piled up, and there was a blanket of grey cloud above. This continued for weeks, and then months, and I started to think I was going mad.
So mad in fact that one day, after another walk in bone-chilling rain, I noticed something in the sky and exclaimed to my husband: “Look! Up there! What is it? Is it an unidentified flying object? A UFO?”
He laughed and said: “ No. That’s the sun!”
Happy country, depressing weather
How can it be that a country with months of such depressing weather is acclaimed one of the happiest countries in the world?
I have concluded that the Danes are a happy bunch because their expectations are lower than others.
A Dane is happy when he gets a strong wind behind him when he’s cycling uphill, when he smells coffee in the kitchen, but most of all, when the sun comes out.
If you are a newcomer to wintry Scandinavia, do not expect a passer-by to smile, or get a friendly nod from a grim-faced jogger in the park, or even a “hello“ from your nearest neighbour.
Danes are not easy to get to know during the long winter months.
Outside of work hours they have their families and close friends to occupy them. Not for them an impromptu chat with a stranger on the street.
They are busy getting to uncle Bjarne’s 60th birthday, or sister Kirsten‘s wedding, a school reunion or a local sports event – all of which have been written in calendar, so they know exactly they they will be doing in week 10, 23 or 98!
Brand new people in The Spring
But all this changes in The Spring!
The days are longer. The sun peeps out from behind that thick cloud. The park is suddenly full of flowers, and you can begin to shed the six layers of clothing you’ve been wearing for your dog walks.
Miraculously your neighbours say “goddag” when you meet them on the stairs, a jogger dodges past you with a smile, the cafés are full of smiling people, sitting outside like sunflowers, faces towards the sun.
From May onwards Denmark is a delight.
So did I manage to answer my question?
Did that sunshine on a Caribbean island help me to write a funny, crazy show that will open this December in cold Copenhagen?
I guess time will tell. And you, my potential audiences, can decide.
At least I have spared my friends my constant complaints about the weather, and I can return with a tan to join the happiest people in the world for another delicious Danish summer.
