How to be happy in Denmark

The monthly boondoggle for supporters with three-plus things to love, including insider tips for Copenhagen

—Say what you want about monarchies, but there’s something comforting about eating old dishes in old restaurants during the Instagram era, under antique photos of dead queens and kings, when said kings and queens appear to be deeply uncomfortable with the idea of being photographed.

I was in Denmark this week for a white-label gig, hired to write a coffee-table book for a Danish company, to commemorate its 100th anniversary. This meant I was interviewing people in rural Jutland for several days, in northwestern Denmark, then in urban Copenhagen. And though the sky was consistently gray, pissing rain, I often thought about the fact that I was visiting a country routinely judged to be among the happiest places on Earth, and I wondered why.

(The pissing rain was consistent.)