Not So Lost in Translation

I was fortunate enough to be invited as Guest of Honor to Viking-Con, a game convention in Denmark Oct.8 to 10. I wanted to share with all of you some of my impressions of the trip....

Sue and I stumbled into the Copenhagen airport at, like, negative nine-thirty, half past thirty-four o'clock, or some other time that doesn't really exist. We'd gotten on the plane in Seattle at seven Sunday night, and now it was seventeen hours earlier or five days later, or something. It felt like nine hours sideways, actually. It was all very unreal.

How do the guys who design the interiors of jet airliners sleep at night? I am, statistically speaking, dead average in height (5 feet, 10 and a half inches) and just slightly larger than average in build. Which means, I guess, that I'm exactly the size they had in mind for their torture chamber they call economy class. The seats in front of me were just the right space ahead so that my knees could press up against them but not so far that I actually could stretch out without putting a strange amount of pressure on my lower thighs.

Our Hosts

Luckily, once we were off the plane, things brightened considerably. Waiting for us (and waiting a long time, since for some reason our luggage came by way of Germany, although it arrived only about a half hour after we did) were Sebastian Flamant and Sanne Harder, our soon-to-be Danish friends (soon to be friends, that is, not soon to be Danes -- they've always been Danes, of course, although Sebastian is also French, and well, never mind). Sebastian is one of those hyper-organized sort of people, which, I've got to tell you, is exactly the kind of person that you want coordinating your visit to a country you've never been to before. He took care of everything, even equipping us with some Danish cash, an umbrella, guidebooks, and a local paper as soon as we arrived. (And a much needed bottle of Coca-Cola Light). Sanne is a charming, artistic, and patient person -- the perfect complement to Sebastian. I can't even begin to go into all the ways they made our visit great.

Despite the fact that they met us at our absolute worst -- cramped, sore, tired, and jet-lagged -- Sebastian and Sanne were very nice to us. This is particularly impressive considering that they had every reason to expect the worst: We were, after all, Americans abroad. After a short nap at our hotel, we went with them to a nice restaurant, where we met still more terrific locals: Tommy Jensen and Marit Nim, managers of a cool local gamestore, Fantask. It's probably worth noting how remarkably well they all spoke English. "Remarkably well" as in "better than some people here in the U.S." (Both Sanne and Sebastian have accents that would make most Americans believe that they were British.)

Later that week, we'd also have the pleasure of meeting up with Søren Thustrup, a frequent poster on our boards (Siobharek) and the newest addition to the Council of Magisters. Søren and his wife Annette made us a nice home-cooked meal, and we got to spend the evening with them and their cute little two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Vibeke. I think she probably thought we were retarded, since we couldn't understand what she said and she couldn't understand the gibberish we were spouting.

Culture Clash (or lack thereof)

Speaking of language, interacting with the people in Denmark often made me feel very inadequate, as I would suddenly realize that we were having in-depth conversations in a language that was not their own. I can say about six words in Spanish, and two of them are fajita and taco. I know some German from watching a lot of Hogan's Heroes as a kid. That's about it. My couple of years of studying Latin gives me a nice grounding in language in general, but doesn't help me actually talk to anyone, except maybe the occasional ancient Roman time traveler, and they are few and far between.

I also probably made a fool of myself a few times explaining things that, it turns out, didn't need to be explained. For example, I found myself explaining to Sebastian what Google was, when of course he used it all the time. Likewise, I spent much of the trip trying to avoid slang and idiom, but that was silly of me. See, not only do all Danes study English in school, but they get all kinds of American and British TV and movies -- and they don't dub them, they subtitle them. That means every trip to the movies, or every episode of Caroline in the City* is also a way to study both English and American culture.

I think, however, that seeing our TV and movies has given the Danish (and probably the rest of the world) some skewed perceptions about the U.S. -- just not the skewed perceptions that I'd expected. I thought they would imagine we all carry around guns and swear a lot. Instead, I got the impression that they think American culture is controlled by various political pressure groups and that we're in fact very prudish.

Then again, maybe they're right.

The Tour of Denmark

The first few days of our visit, Sebastian gave us a guided tour of the city and environs. We visited the very nice National Museum and the extraordinarily impressive Tøjhuset Armory. In all our trips abroad, I've never seen such a vast collection of swords, armor, firearms, and cannons. Nothing even close, actually. We also toured the Roskilde Viking Ship Museum, Kronborg Castle, where the hero Holger Danske waits for Denmark to need him again so that he can come back and save the land. (I found it very cool that during the German occupation of Denmark in WW II, one of the resistance groups there called itself Holger Danske to represent that he was indeed back in the land's time of need.) Kronborg also has some really amazing tunnels underneath it. They are the closest thing to D&D dungeons I've ever seen in real life.

Danish Gamers

During all this touristy stuff, we got the low-down on the Danish gaming scene. Both Sanne and Sebastian, as well as another friend of theirs, Brian (who runs a cool Danish gaming forum), write roleplaying scenarios for conventions. In Denmark, however, that means something a little different than in the U.S.

See, because practically everyone speaks English, most Danish gamers are happy to use American RPG products. This means that -- with a very few exceptions, like a fairly recent game called Fusion -- there are no Danish-language games and thus almost no Danish game designers. So, creative and talented Danes who want to write RPG material write scenarios for conventions. A number of GMs then run each of these scenarios in sessions at conventions, and many are available to run at home as well. Experienced scenario authors attract a following, and even fans.

Another difference between Danish gaming and the community here is that in Denmark, live-action roleplaying is a much bigger activity, relatively speaking. It has far fewer of the stigmas it has here, and also seems to have drawn in the crowd that -- if they lived in the U.S. -- would probably belong to the SCA instead.

Copenhagen has two really great game stores (actually, I heard about one other much small one, but I never got to see it, and there's also a Games Workshop store). The aforementioned Fantask has sold roleplaying games since the very earliest days of the hobby and has sold books and comics for even longer. The store's stock is impressive. I would have a hard time thinking of something they didn't have on their shelves, including a lot of older stuff. Faraos Cigarer is another shop that, while it's not stocked as deeply, offers a very nice storefront and caters heavily to Games Workshop fans and live-action roleplayers.

We even got to play in a Call of Cthulhu session with our new friends Sebastian, Sanne, Brian, and Tommy. It was fun and -- since they were kind enough to run the whole game in English -- pretty much just like a game session I'd play in here. Some things are universal, right down to plenty of chocolately junk food to enjoy during the game.

Viking-Con

Viking-Con is held in a high school (and uses some rooms from a nearby primary school as well), and has almost 700 attendees. This year was Viking-Con 23, and the fact that it had been run for the previous 22 years was readily apparent. I don't know if I've gone to a convention that ran so smoothly. Not only did we never see the organizers in a panic over some emergency, but most had the free time to take in a game or event or two.

Viking-Con differs from most U.S. cons in its full-service approach. First off, the game rooms and dealer's room were all in one handy place (and it's worth noting that, since it was held in a school, every game session got its own room -- no shouting over the DM at the next table over). Viking-Con also served meals and even provided dormitory-style sleeping quarters in the gymnasium. You could have arrived on Friday evening and never left the building for the weekend (although we did -- we stayed in a hotel).

Really, though, Viking-Con was notable to Sue and me for its similarities to other conventions we'd attended, proving mostly that gamers are gamers the world over. In fact, if there was a recurring theme to the entire trip, it's that there are a lot more similarities between life in Denmark and the U.S. than there are differences.

Although you're probably tired of me writing about all the nice people we met, the staff running Viking-Con was, you guessed it, extremely nice. Jens, one of the organizers, took the time to show me a fun dice game called Can't Stop during the convention, and at the wrap-up dinner Sunday night he even gave me a copy as a gift. It was one of the many nice gifts we received there, including a copy of the very first Danish roleplaying games from 1984 called (in English) With Fire and Sword from Marit and a Christmas Cthulhu plush from a Faraos Cigarer staffer named, appropriately, Claus.

Back Home

It was actually a little sad to leave, after having made such good new friends and having spent so much time with them over the past week. It was also sad because it meant we had to get back on the plane to suffer through another nine-and-a-half-hour flight home. Surprisingly enough, even movies like The Terminal and Independence Day did not dull the pain of the plane flight, and I even found myself watching Garfield for a time before deciding it would be better to just try to sleep. This endeavor was more or less successful, and soon we were home again.

Our friend Stan! was there at the airport to pick us up and we were, if anything, even more out of it than when Sebastian and Sanne met us in Copenhagen. But we managed not only to get home but pick up Marley from her boarder's house as well. Our little dog had that, "Oh wow, I thought you guys were gone for good," demeanor when we got her from the dog sitter, but she's over that now, and seemingly just as happy to be home as we are. Jet lag is still keeping me from operating at full capacity, but I'll get over that eventually.

Right?

*While we were there, the only American TV shows I saw were some terrible sitcoms that I'd forgotten even existed. On behalf of all Americans, I'd like to apologize to Denmark and any other country we inflict this dreck on.

 

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