It is all up to you
Denmark has a lot to offer when it comes to spare time activities. It of course depends on whether you live in one of the bigger cities or whether you live in a village – however even the tiniest village has something to offer. You can always discover Denmark outdoor!
We wish to give you an introduction to some of the most common activities – we hope that you will find inspiration and wish to participate in some of the activities.
Danes love their associations and clubs
Almost every Danish child participates in an activity in their local community. There are activities ranging from soccer and swimming to parkour and samba. Also, adults enjoy being part of an association or a club, where they get to be active while being social as well.
Soccer is by far the most popular sport in Denmark, there are more than 320.000 active members in one of the many soccer clubs. Soccer is followed by gymnastics and swimming.
Learning Danish
Being in Denmark due to work or as a spouse to one with a residence and work permit, then you are not obligated to learn Danish, but learning the language will undoubtedly make your stay in Denmark a stay where you get to understand and see more aspects of the life lived in this country.
You can start Danish classes at an official provider of Danish classes when you have your work- and residence permit in hand. At the official language schools you will have to pay a deposit of 1.250,- to start school.
The language schools offer three different types of language programmes, 1, 2 and 3. Language programme 1 is for people with no school background
Language programme 2 is for people who have a short school background
Language programme 3 is for people who have a medium or long school background.
Each language programme consist of six modules. Module six in language programme 3 is qualifying you to enter a Danish taught programme at university level.
Each module has tuition of DKK 2000,-
If you already speak a bit of Danish you can also choose to go with FVU Danish which is a free Danish course, which consists of five courses. Here you will obtain language skills similar to the final level in Danish primary school.
Food for the brain
Denmark is renowned for the folk high schools, where you can take many type of classes and during the summer it is possible to spend a week or more at a folk high school, some of these programmes are family programmes which means that there is activities for both children and adults.
If you are interested in attending a big variety of classes where you can get to explore new areas of research areas – all from history to neuro science or language courses.
Have a look at:
And there is actually a lot of folk universities in many smaller towns around Denmark, it might be worth the while to check out if your local community has something to offer in this area!
Almost 4 out of 10 Danes have done volunteer work duing the last 12 months
Source: The Danish Institute for Voluntary Effor, 2018
Volunteering
Close to 40 % of all Danes are volunteering and this is an excellent way of getting to know even more about the culture in Danish associations.
Some volunteer only a couple of hours per month where others dedicate even more hours to volunteering. Many of the bigger cities has a “volunteering house”, where many of the associations have their administrative contact person – this might be a good entrance point to volunteering.