A new book by a former Danish diplomat and a Moldovan-born cultural analyst argues that the hardest part of moving here has almost nothing to do with you.
Denmark placed third in the 2026 World Happiness Report. The country has sat in the top three for most of the years the report has existed, behind Finland and usually next to Iceland. The rankings are built from how residents rate their own lives on a scale of zero to ten.
Ask internationals living here the same question, and you’ll get different answers. Same country, different experiences. That difference is illustrated in a book published in August, titled The (Un)Happiest Expats in the Happiest Country in the World: When the best of Danish culture goes wrong. The authors are Anatolie Cantir, an associate professor and cultural analyst who arrived in Copenhagen from Moldova around two decades ago, and Signe Biering Röpke, a former Danish diplomat who now works as an executive coach and psychotherapist.
“It is a double title,” AnatolieLWID when asked about the intention behind the brackets. “It is what we try to discuss in this book. This tension of being very happy with some things in Denmark and being unhappy with some other things, and then why.”
How the Book Found Its Two Authors
Both authors found each other the way a lot of people find each other in Denmark, which is online. Signe was reading what Anatolie posted on LinkedIn, and she kept agreeing with it.
“He writes so incredibly insightful stuff, and I think I was a little bit of a fan,” Signe said. “I remember once he wrote something and I thought, I could have written that. I wish I had written that.”
They commented on each other’s posts for a while. Then an email arrived in her inbox.
“The headline was, do you want to write a book with me? And I thought it was a scam. I didn’t even see who it was from.”
It was legitimate. She called him straight away. “I was like, okay, this is too weird. I have to talk about this.” That was roughly two and a half years ago, and by her account, they have not stopped talking since.
Anatolie had a specific reason for wanting a Danish co-author, and he says it plainly.
“No matter what I say, it will always come from a foreigner, from an immigrant,” he said. “I thought it makes the title, the points, the arguments a little bit more bulletproof when we are together.”
He had been writing about the subject for years before that email. In October 2019, he published a LinkedIn article under almost the same title, Denmark: The Unhappiest Expats in the Happiest Country in the World. It picked up 482 reactions and 77 comments.
In it, he pointed to the Expat Insider survey run by InterNations, which had ranked Denmark 63rd out of 64 countries for ease of settling in, and noted that every edition going back to 2014 said the same thing. Seventy percent of expats in Denmark found it hard to make local friends, against 39 percent globally.
“I was overwhelmed with emails,” he said. “But not necessarily with something negative. Rather a lot of stories and concerns and discussions from the whole spectrum.”
He followed it with two more articles, one on equality and one on trust, both under the heading that Danish culture is an extreme.
Two Lines That Never Meet
Partway through our conversation, Anatolie held a printed chart up to his camera. It plots thirteen years of expat survey data for Denmark.
The top lines are working abroad and quality of life. Denmark scores near the best in the world on both. The bottom line is ease of settling in. Denmark is ranked near the bottom. The two run parallel for thirteen straight years, never converging, never crossing.
“Expats are basically saying we really like Denmark,” he said. “We like to work in Denmark. We like our family life here. It is very digitised. It is a very high quality of life. We just cannot be part of this. We cannot settle. We cannot be part of the tribe.”
The settling-in score is not one number. It breaks down into how easy it is to find friends, how welcoming the culture feels, and how friendly locals are toward foreign residents. Denmark performs badly across all of them, and has for over a decade.
Anatolie’s summary of the whole pattern is the line the book is built on. “Expats are happy with Denmark, but they are not happy in Denmark.”
He also points to research that uses the word immigrant rather than expat, where the results run in the same direction. By his reading, immigrants in Denmark report life satisfaction almost as high as Danes do, and report being roughly twice as lonely. He says the pattern transcends across age groups.
The book uses both words on purpose, because the underlying studies do.
“We say, sociologically, anthropologically, if you feel like an expat, then you’re an expat,” he said. “I write in the book, I’m an immigrant. I also write it on my LinkedIn.”
The Sentence Signe Wanted to Stop Hearing
Signe works with international leaders in her coaching practice. She was direct about what motivated her to write the book, and it was one specific thing her clients kept saying.
“They experience that there must be something wrong with me,” she said. “There’s a sadness in that. And it was a big motivator for me. I don’t want to hear that anymore. I don’t want to hear anyone say, maybe it’s me, because that’s bullshit.”
Her perspective comes from her work in therapy, rather than her experience in diplomacy.
“I’m incredibly interested in relieving pain that’s unnecessary,” she said. “And this I find is unnecessary pain. To believe that it’s you, that you didn’t manage to accommodate into Denmark, and everyone else is so happy. Not true. A lot of people are very happy with their lives, but socially a little bit malnourished.”
That distinction, between a life that works and a life that feels connected, is present through the whole book. You can have the job, the apartment, the childcare, and the bike, and still have no one to call on a Sunday.
When the Best of Danish Culture Goes Wrong
The book organises itself around five Danish values: equality, trust, autonomy, privacy and humour.
None of these are presented as flaws. They are the things Denmark is admired for, and the reasons a lot of people move here in the first place. The argument is that both sides underestimate how hard these values push on daily behaviour, and how differently they read from the outside.
“We don’t really moralise behaviour,” Anatolie said. “We try to explain things. If we sit there and say good, bad, good, bad, where do we end up? Nowhere.”
Autonomy is his clearest example. In Denmark, the working assumption is that adults are self-sufficient and will ask when they need something.
“We actually assume people don’t need help in Denmark,” he said. “In fact, we don’t even like to offer too much help, because it makes people feel that they can do it themselves. It’s very much tied to autonomy. Things that are much more typical in hierarchical societies, where we assume a lot of people need help.”
He connects this to how Danish workplaces think about hiring internationally, and he does it with a small scene from the book.
“Oh look, we have employed an engineer. How nice,” he said, imitating the tone. “It’s a very Danish way to look at things. We needed an engineer, we solved the problem. But of course, the engineer comes with a lot of other things. It’s not just a person. She has a family, she has people at home, she has a life. Be interested in her.”
And then the assumption settles it. “So that engineer who got hired, if he does have some issues, he should ask. That is the expectation, because that’s what a Dane would do.”
What the System Can and Cannot Do
I asked Anatolie where Danish institutions have their biggest blind spot when they communicate with foreign residents. He framed it carefully.
“There’s been a lot of effort to integrate, to support internationals. Welcome September and so on. I don’t say this as a critique. I say it rather as an observation. A lot of the approaches have always been institutional.”
Institutional here means brochures, associations, information evenings, English-language guides, open doors. He gives Denmark real credit for it.
“They are very good at creating this environment. Look, we will inform you, we will show you how to do it, you can join anything you want. It’s all open. A lot of it is in English now.”
Then he draws the line where it stops.
“But when it comes to daily life, it stops after four o’clock. Where you get closer to people, where you get to know them, where you can go to dinners. Very few internationals come into a Danish house.”
He mentions a Gallup survey that asked Danes how many friends they had at work. According to him, the respondents did not understand the question. Friendship and colleagues were divided into different categories in their heads, and the survey had put them in the same one.
Signe was clear that neither of them are trying to change the culture itself.
“To change Danish culture is too big,” she said. “It changes slowly, and it’s more open now than it was ten or twenty years ago. But we have to look at what we can do to alleviate the pain of being a little bit on the outside, and also make Danes aware of the fact that they behave as they do.”
She thinks the change that is realistic is smaller and slower than policy.
“At least it’s no longer as normal to say, I have enough friends. I want Danes to reflect a little and think, I have enough friends, and I wonder why I’m saying that.”
The Retention Problem
There is a business case underneath all of this, and the numbers are not small.
More than 330,000 full-time positions in Denmark are held by international employees, contributing around DKK 360 billion to the country’s GDP, according to Copenhagen Capacity. Its Expat Survey 2025 collected responses from 2,160 internationals from more than 100 countries.
The findings match the pattern in Anatolie’s chart. Forty-three percent of respondents planned to extend their stay. At the same time, after five years, half have gone home, and that share has grown over the past decade. Among the smaller group who decided to cut their stay short, not feeling included at the workplace was the strongest factor.
Anatolie referenced the same study during our call.
“They say they have a hard time integrating at work,” he said. “They don’t say that work is bad. They just say they have a hard time being part of it. Because maybe you expect to be good friends, close colleagues.”
Signe’s advice to companies starts with them admitting the problem is theirs.
“If they acknowledge that this is an issue for them, that’s the first step,” she said. “Retention is an issue, or they repeatedly see that these internationals underperform. So one thing is leaving. Another thing is not performing as high as you’d expect them to. That is also an indicator of someone not thriving.”
What she suggests after that is unglamorous and cheap.
“Have we told them that we’re happy for them to be here? You could start by asking. How are you thriving? Is it okay here? Because I hear that some internationals are not greatly happy socially here, and I would hate for that to happen to you.”
Then she draws the same boundary many Danes do, and she draws it quickly.
“I can’t offer you friendship. Danes have to say that very fast. But I can offer you friendliness, if I really try.”
And the part she wants managers to think about: “The system can’t do it. You have to take it on yourself. What did you do today for the person sitting next to you?”
Being spoken to
Near the end of the conversation, Signe brought up a comment from a retired Danish researcher that she had read that same morning. It is the most practical thing either of them said.
Danes, the observation goes, enjoy being spoken to. They just will not start.
“They don’t get in touch with you,” she said. “But if you sit down and say, hey Jan, would you mind telling me a little bit about rye bread, why is everyone so happy about it, then Jan will talk about his rye bread for half an hour. How he takes it on vacation, how he does this and that. But you need to initiate, and people love it.”
Her description of the effect is blunt. “We get so charmed if anyone wants to talk to us, and if they pay us a little compliment on Denmark, we are soft as butter.”
Anatolie agreed, with a note on why it works. “Somehow, they think Denmark is a very special country. And if anything, people will always tell you more things. Small things, but also big things.”
Signe was also honest about her own record abroad, which she rates poorly.
“I’m not a good immigrant when I move to other countries, because I don’t engage. I become a little bit passive,” she said. “So I know how it is to be a passive one, feeling lonely in other countries. It takes a lot of guts to go out there.”
What They Want You to Take From It
I asked both of them what they want an international reader who feels isolated right now to take away from the book.
Signe answered first: “You’re not alone. And don’t rest on that. Go do something. First cry a little, get angry with the Danes, and then get over it and go do something. Because it’s much easier to go do something if it’s not about you, if it’s about the bloody system. So move into action, and be kind to yourself.”
Anatolie’s answer went back to where the book started.
“About 80 percent of it is about misunderstandings,” he said. “We operate from such different frameworks. What is a friend? What is a colleague? That very often creates such a big tension in someone. Maybe we can take some of that tension away.”
He says the reaction he gets is rarely from newcomers.
“I’ve had people who have been here 18 years, 20 years, and when you explain some of these elements, they get a huge shock. They always say, why didn’t I read this?”
Then comes the line that perhaps does the most work in the whole book, and the one most likely to be misunderstood if you read it the wrong way.
“Things are almost never personal in Denmark. It’s not so much about you. People are so much into their own little life that they hardly see other things.”
Both authors mean it as relief. If the door does not open, nobody decided that about you, because nobody decided anything at all. The door is usually just closed, and closed doors can be knocked on.
