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The Denmark secret: how it became the most trusting country

There are real benefits to a society where people feel safe enough to leave their babies and bikes on the street. How have the Danes achieved this level of faith in their fellow citizens?

This style has a long history in Denmark, and its social benefits have been boosted over the past 30 years by a lot of municipal investment: tearing down concrete structures, planting trees, giving the public realm a shared, owned atmosphere so people treat and behave in it as they would their private homes.Shapins and his partner have lived all over the US and Europe, but they’re settled now in Copenhagen. This is the legacy of the 19th-century poet, pastor and politician NFS Grundtvig, who also established the folk high school (fee-paying, with scholarships available for low-income families), which Danes can go to for the six months before they start university. Whatever that settlement is, it played out during the pandemic, during which Denmark had stay-at-home rules but no curfews, few anti-vaxxers, low political polarisation around the handling of Covid, scant misinformation and high “ samfundssind ” (community spirit).

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