'Scuse Me, Pardon Me, Coming Through

If there's one quirk about the Danes that seems to annoy both Americans and Brits more than anything, and that every one of them notices fairly quickly, it's the strange way that Danes behave in crowds.

The first thing you'll notice if, for example, you take a stroll on a sunny day through central Copenhagen, is that everyone seems to be very rudely bumping into you.  In America and the UK (and probably other countries that I've never been to) there tends to be an unspoken rule about which side of the sidewalk to walk on so that everyone can pass without being jostled... in Denmark that unspoken rule doesn't seem to exist.

My husband warned me about this before I ever set foot here.  He refers to it as their "lack of spacial awareness."  My first experience with it was more than a year ago, when I visited Denmark for the first time.  If I remember correctly, we were standing on the platform at the Roskilde train station and a woman turned around without looking and elbowed me.  She didn't hit me hard enough to do any damage, but certainly hard enough that we both noticed.  Or, should have noticed.  She didn't seem even vaguely aware that she'd done it.  Had this happened in America, even in cities that are considered to have the rudest people, she would have at the very least turned around and apologized before going about her business.

This is not the case in Denmark.  Indeed, it must be such a normal thing that apologizing didn't seem to even cross her mind.

Foreigners that I've spoken to about this usually think that this behavior among Danes is extraordinarily rude.  Personally, I don't think it's actively rude, but it is certainly passively rude.  Rudeness through obliviousness, or perhaps a certain social awkwardness that makes talking to strangers too scary.

Even if it's to apologize for accidentally hitting them.

In fact, there's another side to this "spacial awareness" coin, and I think it very much relates to this awkward fear of talking to strangers...

Let me set the scene: This particular grocery store is set up so that as you enter, there's a bakery counter on the right, and the cash registers on the left.  This can create a small bottleneck if there are people finishing checking out, a line at the bakery, and someone trying to enter to store.  Yesterday, I encountered this very scenario as I was leaving.  One woman in line at the bakery was clearly standing directly in the way of a women with a stroller trying to enter the store.  I would have politely tapped the woman on the shoulder and said, "Excuse me."  The woman with the stroller, however, instead of talking to a stranger who was quite obliviously standing directly in the middle of the walkway, moved a stack of grocery baskets out of the way so that she could squeeze past without touching the other woman.

The question I have is this:  Do the Danes find making their way through crowds as awkward and frustrating as we foreigners to?  Do they know that there's a better way?

I say we foreigners band together to teach them.  Who's with me?