Last Week in Denmark
Curious about what’s really happening in Denmark — and how it affects your life here? Each week, two hosts from the LWID community talk through the top news stories and developments — in English — sharing personal insights and international perspectives. It’s a clear and accessible conversation about life in Denmark, made for people who live here but didn’t grow up here. Last Week In Denmark is a volunteer-driven media project with a simple mission: to empower people through information.
With a mix of short summaries, thoughtful discussion, and context you can actually use, we cover everything from housing and healthcare to politics. Whether you're new to Denmark or have been here for years, this is your go-to bite-sized update on what’s happening — and why it matters to you. Thank you for helping us grow.
Last Week in Denmark
From High Grocery Prices to Greenlandic Parental Rights: Denmark’s Big Challenges for Internationals: LWID S4E2
Prices, Parenting, and Politics Collide in Denmark. This week, Golda and Kalpita unpack how Denmark’s big debates hit everyday life. From soaring grocery bills to Greenlandic parents fighting for their rights, and the government’s bailouts of major companies like Ørsted, these stories raise tough questions about fairness, identity, and who bears the cost of change. With their close connection to Denmark, Golda and Kalpita bring both international insight and personal perspective to issues shaping the country right now.
Dive right in:
(00:00) This week's topics
(01:37) Grocery store price increases
(11:25) Greenland parental rights
(22:30) Danish government investing in private businesses
In this episode:
Cohosts:
- Golda - https://www.linkedin.com/in/goldafania/
- Kalpita - https://www.linkedin.com/in/kalpitabhosale/
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- Stephanie - https://www.linkedin.com/in/dstephfuccio/
Audio Editor:
Transcript Editor / Podcast Assistant:
- Francesca - https://www.linkedin.com/in/francesca-hills/
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Kalpita
Hello everyone, welcome to Season 4 Episode 2, I am Kalpita and I have Golda with me. How are you, Golda?
Golda
I'm good. Nice to see you again.
Kalpita
Yeah, likewise in this very lovely extended summer season.
Golda
Yeah, it was amazing.
Kalpita
Brilliant. I don't think it was very amazing for women in Greenland. We are talking about three very incredible topics today. One is about Greenland getting their rights back to be with their children. There are some laws that determine if their Greenlandic parents are fit to have their kids living with them and growing up with them, which is, to say the least, an incredible law that takes away children from their parents. At the same time, we are going to touch upon Ørsted, a very big Danish energy company which is supported by Danish grants and the government. And there's a big debate about if the government should invest in companies and continue supporting them, which also aligns with the bit of what's going on with Novo Nordisk and economists calling them, that they're having a Nokia moment. And then one of my favorite topics to talk about today is the inflated grocery prices in Denmark.
Golda
Favorite?
Kalpita
Yeah, it is. I mean, the conversations I've had around grocery prices for the past few months has been just amazing. Everybody agrees it's, it's amazing how expensive a piece of meat is. Milk, butter, even if they're locally produced, vegetables. I mean, we all know eating healthy is expensive, and it is a luxury and it is a hard choice to make, but at the same time, it does not help inflated prices. And we live in a country like Denmark, which is very, very aware and conscious of health and sustainability and so on. So have you, have you experienced any of these inflated prices?
Golda
So I don't live in Denmark anymore, but I would say it's also quite expensive here in the UK. I was having a conversation with my friend yesterday, and she was telling me that 400 grams of beef was like 55 krones. So she was definitely also complaining about the prices. And I also had a friend that just visited Denmark. Actually, she was only there for two days and she said Denmark is so expensive. So I can just imagine what's going on. It was already quite an expensive place. So with inflation and everything, I just think it's really sad. And unfortunately, the people that are going to suffer are the people who are already in a lower socioeconomic status. So the initiatives that the government have to kind of push people to eat healthier, to reduce obesity, is going to be counteracted by the fact that food is so expensive and to eat healthy now has probably become even more expensive. Yeah, it's quite unfortunate.
Kalpita
It is. I have this tracker which is called my sister who is back home in India and I often have conversations with her when I'm making a grocery run, for example. And every time I go to the grocery I am checking the price of our coffee that we have every day. And every time I check the price has changed. And it's not changed to be a discounted price, which it often is, but it's changed to be like from 55 kroner to the last I checked two days ago it was 89 kroner. Oh, and it's not even. Yeah, and it's not even a special coffee. It's. It's just a regular Danish-produced coffee actually. So I don't know what gives with, with the pricing. The other week we also had like a summer garden get together of the family, which we usually do once a year at the. Apart from yule focused, of course. And everyone at the table, both young and old were talking about, they went to the supermarket at the butcher's to get a piece of meat so we could enjoy it at the table. And that was next to impossible to get a decent cut of meat for a reasonable price. And there is also a big influx of meat and produce coming from other parts of Denmark. Sorry, other parts of Europe, the Dutch region, Ireland. So we get Irish meat as well in the supermarkets now and from other countries around Europe, which is not going down very well with Danish people. Of course. We have a big, big focus and preference for consuming Danish products. Danish-made products as well, especially vegetables and things like that, and meat as well. We take pride in Danish meat. So that has also changed from a supermarket perspective. There are no local butchers anymore unfortunately, even the fishermen almost don't exist. So these prices do not make sense, they do not match the benefits, they do not match the basic needs of an average citizen.
Golda
Yeah, it's so unfortunate. And everybody's complaining. And I've also heard like people are really trying to push Mette Frederiksen and to do something and help the average person. I'm even wondering now how these prices would look like in the bazaars and in certain areas where, yeah, the lower-income people are. And I feel for the students as well. We were already eating oatmeals and shawarmas when we were studying. So I can only imagine now you can't even make like a proper wrap without spending so much money. Yeah, it. Because it's such a global problem as well, it's left me wondering, like how do, how do we shift this economy? How, what are the plans to support individuals in such, such times where we might just see a regression in consumer behavior, which is a result of this and it might affect other health indicators, as I mentioned.
Kalpita
Yeah. I mean in general in Denmark there's been a drop in purchase no matter what it is, which is a big shift for the Danish society in the past one year. And the government has said that they are going to launch an investigation or research why these prices are inflated and propose tax subsidies and deductions, because that seems to be the thing that is resulting in this inflated pricing. But it's interesting that there are very specific areas where these prices have inflated and then have had a ripple effect on other products. For example, I remember, I would say as much as last year around Christmas, there was this big, big conversation in the UK about Lurpak butter and that they were inflating prices on purpose. And you could see that also in Denmark around Christmas time as well, where Lurpak became incredibly expensive. I mean a block of butter was 42 kroner, I remember. And we just chose to not bake things because the butter was incredibly expensive. And so, so butter prices, for example, like butter. Then there's meat of all kinds. Then there is olive oil, coffee, which have prices that have gone up more than 20%. Like you do not get olive oil for less than 100 kroner, maybe 80 kroner if you're lucky that the stock lasts on the shelves. Wow. And that's just. Yeah, and that's just budget prices.
Golda
Wow.
Kalpita
So it's, it's not that this has been something that's going on because of the economy. It is also something that companies have inflated prices on purpose and, yeah, go on.
Golda
I'm thinking that's usually because we have a few players who are selling, you know, the Coops and the Sellindges are like the bigger players. So that means it's less competitive prices. They can just set the prices. You know, Coop is behind like so many different smaller change market chains anyway. So yeah, I think it's, it's one of those like monopoly things I'm, I'm thinking happening here where. But it's, yeah, it's sadly unfair for the consumers.
Kalpita
Yeah, absolutely, yeah. And it's, it's also hard to, hard to not think that they're just filling their pockets at the same time. It does worry me in the way that why is there so much control in the hands of the supermarket vendor? Why are they given so much autonomy on these things, right? I mean, you would think that a nomad, for example, which has cheaper goods and some good quality goods as well, their prices have also inflated because it is a ripple effect and that you can see in all other products as well.
Golda
Yeah, I'm shocked. Nomad used to be my go-to.
Kalpita
Yeah, exactly. And you know, anyone who's on a budget, and most of us are, that becomes your go-to. And it then feels like, you know, there's no place to go, and that's not fair. But I do like that the government is taking cognizance of it and that they're going to go into the parliament with a suggestion for reducing taxes on food, which I think will be great, especially then we all can have a better Christmas.
Golda
Yes.
Kalpita
Yeah, and enjoy the good Frikadelle.
Golda
I love Frikadelle, yeah.
Kalpita
Well, that brings me to the Greenlandic topic. Speaking of Christmases and having a good time with family. I'm not surprised that the government in Denmark had this law where they could take away kids from their parents. Have you heard anything about that before? I'm sure you know more than me.
Golda
Definitely, I mean, within the immigrant community there's always been a silent fear that, you know, the government will come and take your child. And, you know, there was also a ghetto loven, which was some years back targeting the Nørrebro area and Mjølnerparken. And basically, part of that was that immigrant families were not integrating their children into Danish laws and therefore had to be forcefully put in institutions at an early age to learn Danish culture. I think there's always been a targeted effort towards immigrant families regarding what is proper parenting, and we're doing it the Danish way. And in some aspects, I understand the concerns from the government, but in another aspect, I also think that it's very discriminatory because the assumption in some way, shape or form would be that all ethnic Danish or white parents know how to raise their kids and don't need to take this assessment, right. And with Denmark's history in Greenland, to implement such a thing again, I'm sure they have some type of evidence to back this up, but should be very, very careful when you target one specific group. What are you thinking?
Kalpita
I'm actually thinking of this film that came out in India, I think, a year and a half ago, and it was about this lady who, Indian lady, who moves to Norway.
Golda
Yeah.
Kalpita
And she has her child taken away from her because she has her own special Indian ways of bringing up her kid, which didn't agree with the Norwegian government. And that resonates with me when you say that it's not just Greenlandic, but just the overall immigrant community that faces this, very, very sad, very, very narrow as well, For a society that is so forward and so advanced, it really surprises me that Scandinavia, now that we're extending to Norway, is so restrictive in thinking that there's only one good way of bringing children up. I totally understand if there are rules about violence against a kid and stuff like that. There absolutely should be laws for that. But there are different ways every culture has within it, to bring up children, to teach children and give them the upbringing that the culture deems fit. And that's, that should be the idea, right? Because children giving children a cultural upbringing is such a blessing, not just restricted to language, but also the customs and traditions and all kinds of things that come with different cultures.
Golda
It ties into their identity of who they are and the allowance to have dual identity. We're all, we're living in a globalized world, and I think another part of that effort that was happening in the Nørrebro area was the fact that children who spoke more than one language were now seen as not being competent enough, or that it's affecting their Danish. And that reflected now on the parents, telling the parents not to speak their language to their children, but rather to speak Danish. And I think it's too much interference by the government in that sense. I'm also reading here that many of the assessments penalized indigenous parenting styles, such as communal caregiving and extended family networks, as incompetent. Right. And that type of perspective, as you said, is very narrow, and it's very in line with the shift that even Europe have seen moving from a big family unit to now a nuclear family unit. But the issue that we're seeing is that within the nuclear family unit, people are becoming exhausted, especially mothers that are burdened with the responsibility of caregiving much more than fathers, even in ethnic white Danish families. So a lot of the studies in psychology is actually saying now that communal family and community is the way to raise up a child properly. But I often find that, as with language and parenting styles, that Denmark sometimes misses the mark in what global research is saying. Like globally, they would say, oh, children who speak more than one language are intelligent and they can adapt in different environments and all that stuff. Whereas in, I think the policies in Denmark are more reflective of, we don't want to lose the Danish traditions and norms and our identity, even if people come in. But what a Dane looks like today is very different than what a Dane looked like 50 years ago. And one can be fully integrated, but yet also acknowledge certain aspects of an indigenous or different culture that does produce healthy children who contribute to society in a very positive way as well. So it, it kind of hurts me to read that there's already a negative stereotype that Greenlandic people are like drunkards. And, you know, it's, it's already hard for them to beat certain stereotypes when they come to Denmark. So, on top of this not being trusted to even raise your child, for me, it's just, it's way too much pressure on a community that is already facing a lot of pressure. It's something else if they said, we want to support you, and how can we put in initiatives and interventions that can support families? But to assess them and then potentially remove and separate families for me does not necessarily lead to the best outcomes at all.
Kalpita
Yeah, I'm also thinking of the woman, you know. For a mother who's just had her baby, with all that goes into conceiving and delivering one, and then you just have some random person because of their law, come in and take your kid. That must have some very different impact and implications on a woman. And then how are you, I mean, how are you even... even having the gall to consider human rights and women's rights? You know, imagine that you have a society where women do not get to have any relation with their child. What kind of a society are you, are you encouraging? That's also something to consider, not just from a medicine and scientific point of view, but also from a psychological point of view. What kind of society are you, are you really encouraging. Also, for the kid to not be with the parents and grow up in a completely neutral environment where, where they get no normal upbringing like someone else in their school. Or in the society, when they really grow up and come out as adults? That's also something to consider.
Golda
Yeah, I agree it's a touchy subject, and I think it's, it requires a lot of evaluation. But this is also why I think representation really matters in certain... when you're creating policies to have different perspectives. And this is not just in terms of like immigration, but also, for example, if you're creating a policy about women or a policy about work, it's just really, really good to have the different perspectives so you understand how some of these policies affect different people, group and may actually disproportionately be a disadvantage to others.
Fionn
Did you know that the Last Week in Denmark newsletter is available in eight languages? Hey there, this is Fion from the Last Week in Denmark podcast. And every week you guys are tuning in to hear me and my fellow co-hosts talk about the top news of the week in English. But let's be real, we're all internationals. So not only are you speaking English every day, you're probably also speaking a bit of Danish, but you've probably also got your own native language as well, like the multilingual master you are. So why not treat yourself to the luxury of being able to read Danish news each week in your own native language? So head on over to lastweekdk.substack.com. That's lastweekdk.substack.com and sign up for our newsletter delivered to you every single Sunday.
Kalpita
Absolutely. That brings me to yet another thing that the government is doing is putting a lot of money in Ørsted because they're not doing very well and to support them, they have given them, I think about 60% share rights in Ørsted. Do you have an opinion on if a government should invest in private companies?
Golda
Hm, to a certain extent? Like what happened during the lockdown when, you know, a lot of businesses were going down, they couldn't, you know, a lot of them didn't think they were going to survive and then the government came in to, to support and bail out. So I would say definitely, yes. With especially smaller-medium enterprises, with larger businesses, that one is hard.
Kalpita
I know that it is quite normal in modern days for a government body to invest in private companies, and that is a way for them to invest and get or make money through their investments to support the general society and make things better. But it is also another thing to, to invest in a company which is almost drowning and then keep it afloat. It affects a lot of things in terms of tax money.
Golda
Yeah.
Kalpita
In terms of job opportunities and also the, the entire economic and business dynamics of having an international business. That's also another debate alongside the debate, whether the government should invest in private or not, is that how dependent should the Danish government be on big companies like Maersk, Novo and Ørsted, for example? Novo had their prices drop as well and they had this big management change as well, which we spoke about last time, as well as a company like Maersk, who's been a bit up and down in the, in the share market as well ever since COVID hit. And now Trump's new decisions have also affected the global economy and this could be part of the ripple effect. So how dependent should a government be on big companies, especially a small one like Denmark?
Golda
I am under the impression that private sector is actually what sustains most countries, a thriving private sector. So I understand why the government would have high stakes in the private sector. And I'm also reading here that the bailout is also more about protecting the ordinary Dane's retirement savings. So considering the fact that the government kind of needs these companies to go afloat and succeed in order for their citizens to also have a retirement plan so that they don't have to now find ways to give people their retirement, especially with them increasing the age that one could actually retire, I don't think government would be able to handle it by themselves to carry the GDP of a country alone. So, in a small country like Denmark, I think it makes sense, it does.
Kalpita
Okay. That's an interesting take, I also think It's quite all right for government bodies to invest in private. It is a money-making business. I do know that there are controversial opinions about whether it should be with people's pension money and should a pension fund be investing. But that does make sense again because pension is also a business and everybody wants to make money whether you're a bank, you're a pension or an NGO for that matter.
Golda
Exactly.
Kalpita
Yeah. But having said that, I'm sure, or at least I hope secretly, that the government has other investments which are going really well and Ørsted is just one of, where they plan to save the company and hopefully the company does well. I do feel compelled to also consider that it is a energy company and we have this big conversation going on about if we should move to nuclear energy and how should we support our future in terms of energy consumption as well. So that's quite interesting that it is Ørsted and they are supporting it to such an extent, as far as I know, I think Ørsted is also a company that's very open to hiring internationals as well.
Golda
Yeah, definitely.
Kalpita
So, we like Ørsted. Yeah, well, but all in all, I think it's, we are going into a phase where we will get such news. Quite a bit of people making losses and then being saved by some sort of investment. Yeah, we are, we are walking into uncertain times. But to be fair, big companies will eventually recover.
Golda
Yeah.
Kalpita
Because that's what the market does.
Golda
Yeah.
Kalpita
It is in the interest of an investor and the market to have such dips and be resilient in recovery. We did that in all other financial crisis, including Covid.
Golda
Yes
Kalpita
And it, I mean we do see it in the news as well, even with inflated prices and things like that, that the government is having surplus. We are doing quite well actually. People are getting jobs. People are able to have the purchasing power. They are smart to not use their money right away. Housing has become stagnant as well, which is better than increasing prices, especially in places like Jutland and things like that. So stagnancy is better than anything else right now. Also, we are preparing heavily in protecting our country with the threat we have from Russia. There are active drills going on around city.
Golda
Yeah.
Kalpita
And all kinds of things within the defense thing as well. So I think, I think we should in some way brace ourselves to get this kind of news and have a cushion with, that the government is trying to create for us. I think we definitely have a positive outlook with a little bit of a road bump right now.
Golda
Yeah, I agree. 100% agree.
Kalpita
Yay. On that positive note and optimism, I thank you for your time, Golda.
Golda
Yes, it was nice talking once again.
Kalpita
And we will see you in the next episode.
Golda
Yeah. Stay tuned.
Kalpita
Hey, this is Kalpita and Golda, co-hosts of the Last Week in Denmark podcast. Did you know Last Week in Denmark offers sponsored content in the newsletter? Our reporters are producing original articles and content tailored for internationals in Denmark.
Golda
So if you have a business our readers should know about, let us write about it. Get in touch with us at reporter@lwid.dk. You can also reach out to us on LinkedIn and Instagram @lastweekindenmark.
