Denmark in a Nuthshell

Preface: Given the nature of the subject matter and the opacity of my writing, I have decided to help out the reader by marking with an asterisk those facts about Denmark which sound like jokes but aren't.  (Those that the sound like a joke but are unmarked are actually jokes, usually made up by me.  Since Danes like to laugh about themselves, and I am half-Danish, these jokes will be half-funny.)

I don't know what the Danish national beverage is, but it might be akvavit or aquavit or however it's spelled.  Aquavit is a very Scandinavian sort of caraway-fennel vodka*.  It is reported to taste like rocket fuel, which is strange since Denmark does not have a space program.

Denmark minus Greenland is half the size of Maine and a sixth the size of Oregon.*  Some people say Greenland is not actually green, but if you look at a world map you can see that it actually is.

Denmark is spelled "Danmark" in Denmark.  The D e n m a r k spelling was necessary because there is no A in English.

People from Denmark are called "Danes".  If you call them "Dutch" I will go berzerk, brandish my battleaxe, and sunburn easily.

Denmark Vessey was an African-American slave who led a revolt.  It failed.

The Little Mermaid is a story written by the most famous Dane of all time, Hans Christian Anderson.  A copper statue of The Little Mermaid sits in Copenhagen harbor, sadly contemplating her native sea and delighting tourists with her grace and innocence.  The statue has been decapitated twice and blown up once.*

In addition to H.C. Andersen, famous Danes include navigator Vitus Bering, astronomer Tycho Brahe, philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, comedian Victor Borge, and King Christian X, who led the peaceful resistance to Nazi violence against Jews.  Other prominent Danes include several generations of extremely violent Vikings and a shamefully small number of death metal musicians.

Danish is a close relative of English, but it sounds rather like the sound Italian toddlers make when they have a mouthful of dishwashing liquid.  The Danish alphabet has 29 characters*; the three extra ones are formally known as "A and E stuck together", "A with a dot over it", and "O crossed out so it looks like a zero on an old PC".

Danish wildlife includes wild boar, feral Great Danes, and Swedes who get on the ferry to take advantage of relatively low local excise taxes on liquor.  The Danes have some of the best and worst food in the world.  The former includes a variety of fresh fish, dark rye bread, butter, and salty licorice flavored with ammonium chloride*.  The latter includes marzipan, tilsit, pickled herring, and some sort of horrendous concoction made from stale bread soaked in flat beer; its name translates to "beer bread".  No, really - it is supposed to be made from soaking stale bread in flat beer.*

Out of guilt for tilsit, "beer bread", and those centuries of Vikings mistreating British peasants, the Danes have transformed themselves recently into nice people.  "Recently" being around five hundred years ago.  Basically, all the Danes went to see the a travelling production of Hamlet and realized that if they kept on like they were, they were all going to end up stabbed or poisoned.  So they turned in their battleaxes, freed their thralls, and decided to only colonize uninhabited places.

Danish explorer: Wow, this whole island is covered with ice!  It should be totally uninhabited!

Native Greendlander: "Should be", but isn't.

Danish explorer: Aww, nuts.