Everyone likes a nice ass, and no one likes a smart ass, the saying goes. The Danes don’t care. They have a thing for arses. All kinds.

The list of Danish idioms involving your rear end goes on and on. My favourite may be their expression for a job that is particularly badly done, which is then said to move up and down like King Volmar’s arse (gå op og ned som kong Volmers røv). Quite the epitaph.* But then Danes have always had a troubled relationship with their royals (and vice versa).

Getting an arse-full isn’t a quaint pre-metric measure of the kind Americans and Brits are so found of. No, få røven fuld means being taken for a fool. If you are instructed to seal your arse (lokke røven) you are told to be be quiet in the most direct way possible.

But Danes don’t just focus on the behind. They also have a healthy interest in fully frontal parts. This isn’t expressed in idioms so much as a very liberal approach to information about people’s (no longer) private parts. As we have seen, some individuals market their goods in public, but this is just an expression of a more widespread (!) phenomenon: even Danish public television has a series of programmes called “me and my pussy/dick” (“Jag og min fisse/pik“) where you are treated to close-ups of different… er… bits, while the unseen owners regale you with cautionary tales from the netherlands.

So that’s Mor Danmark for you. Unlike John Bull and Uncle Sam (both rather creepy characters that seem hell-bent on molesting you, one way or another), the Danish national character is down to Earth in the extreme, an old lady with a naughty streak, face probably like that of a happy prune, telling you the truth whether you want to or not.

[Tried to find a suitable illustration for this imaginary woman on the Internet. Take my word for it: don’t.]

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*I really hope he was one of those early Viking kings that invaded England, so that he can feature in that famous pamphlet, World’s Greatest British Lovers.