"I've never known a Dane who wasn't bone simple."

Bill Burroughs


Translation: honest and straightforward. At least, that's been my experience of Danes I met... and Icelanders, too.

I met a man who sang the praises of Norway this past Sunday. I took a shuttle van home from Cape Breton. It was packed full of a typical selection of us CBers: the chatty, friendly and slightly slutty lookin' woman in her late thirties; the sixty-ish balding red-headed man who knows everybody on the island; the delightful and shy Acadian woman on her way to pick up a relative from hospital; the young man returning to the Oil Patch after two weeks of debauchery with old buddies (my lord, was he sweatin' out the stench of stale alcohol!); and next to me, way in the back, a tall thin very dark older fellow who appeared to be Indian or Pakistani. But no, he was a citizen of Norway, visiting his daughter here, and yearning for the hills and green valleys of his homeland. He was lyrical in describing its beauty and the virtues of its people. An interesting encounter.