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I'm an American living in Denmark, and for the first time I am having to play by the cultural and legal rules of Danish summer vacation. Let me explain.
My oldest child just turned 6, which is when you start school in Denmark, as opposed to 5 years old in the US. If you have preschool-age kids there is always a variation of "summer day care" where institutions join together, and you can be flexible with the weeks you take. When your child starts attending public school, schools close down during the summer period. While it's up to the individual schools to decide their holiday period, many Danish families take the same three to four weeks of vacation in mid-July into early August.
In Denmark, enjoying a long summer vacation isn't just a perk — it's a right under the Danish Holiday Act, called Ferieloven. It embodies Denmark's philosophy toward work-life balance and ensures that every employee, regardless of the nature of employment (permanent, temporary, full-time, or part-time), gets ample time off to unwind. A long summer vacation is a very important part of Danish culture, and Denmark consistently ranks among the best in the world for employee satisfaction and work-life balance, but as someone coming from the US, where the average employee gets two weeks of vacation a year, it takes some getting used to.
If you have a full-time job in Denmark like I do, you get five or six weeks paid holiday a year. While The Holiday Act allows flexibility in when it can be taken, it attributes a "main holiday" period between May 1st and September 30th, where employees are encouraged, but not mandated, to take three consecutive weeks of their accrued leave. I have not been used to taking vacation time, and also still have a bit of American work ethic mixed with a fear of being away too long. I've been so precious about parsing out my vacation days in Denmark, that it's actually backfired and I've lost the time I didn't take.
For those on a team, you will need to plan your time off well in advance because your Danish colleagues will be. The Holiday Act says that employees should ideally inform their employers about their leave plans three months in advance for the main holiday period. If you are one of the people working through the summer, as I've done the past two years, it's a very quiet time, which can be nice, but it is difficult to get anything done that requires co-dependencies.
Danes do not respond to calls or texts during this period, a work-life balance quality I appreciate but found shocking when I first experienced it. This is why some Danish companies not only urge everyone to take those weeks but even close down during those summer months. At first, I struggled to understand how Nordic companies can run effectively, given how long the summer holidays are, but they do.
While there are many upsides to the summer vacation "high season" period, one of the downsides is that many holiday activities and destinations in Denmark, such as amusement parks or bath hotels, are packed and price gouged during this time. Flights out of Denmark are also double the price. Many Danes choose instead to go camping or head off to their summer houses, which are usually within an hour or two drive from home.
Growing up in the US, I spent a full eight weeks at summer overnight camp in Wisconsin every year from age 4. I loved the skills I was able to acquire, like horseback riding, sailing, and water skiing, but I was starved for parent visiting weekends. In Denmark, there are many free and paid day camp options, but no real equivalent of an overnight camp other than a weeklong scout camp, likely because families prefer spending their holidays together.
Now that I'm a working parent in Denmark, I'm very grateful for getting to experience a new way of spending the summer holidays together with family. I just need to learn how to take the time off and really unplug.
