A generous welfare system has encouraged a Danish culture of single-person households, but living alone can also have its downside

Anyone who caught the Danish political drama Borgen on television will remember the high-powered blonde journalist, Katrine Fønsmark, pottering around in her cramped but charming canal-side apartment.

Fønsmark and her on-off spin doctor lover, Kasper Juul, take refuge from their frantic lives in their one-person flats — and when they do move in together, it all goes horribly wrong.

According to real-life journalist Laura Engstrøm, 44, and graphic designer Laura Danielsen, 38, both of whom live in the same red-brick tenement as the fictional Fønsmark, this is very much how life is for many young Danes.

“It’s easier to count the ones who are not single,” laughs Engstrøm, thinking about the building. “Just in my entrance there are six or seven flats, and I think there’s only one family.”

“Her life as portrayed in Borgen doesn’t strike me as odd in any way,” agrees Danielsen. “When I was younger I used to work so much, and when you came back you’d just be knackered and need to sleep and unwind. When I was younger, people didn’t necessarily want to share a flat.”

According to People in the EU, a new publication from Eurostat, the EU’s statistical office, Denmark boasts by far the highest proportion of single-person households of any country in the European Union, at 45%. Finland, the country with the next highest share, has only 40.8%. In the UK it is 30.6%. In Spain, 23.2%.

According to figures from Statistics Denmark, the phenomenon of alene-kultur, as the Danes call it, has been on the march for decades, with the proportion of Danes living alone rising by 42% since 1986.

“Part of the equation relates to social norms,” argues Maria Iacovou, reader in quantitative sociology at Cambridge University, an expert on European living arrangements. “If you’re looking at young adults particularly, certainly in Italy, if a young man wanted to go and live alone, people might say ‘what’s wrong with his family?’, whereas in the Scandinavian countries they might ask what’s wrong with a young person if they are living with their parents when they are 29.”

Denmark is a highly individualist society, according to the Hofstede centre, which analyses national cultures according to the “cultural dimensions” theory of Dutch sociologist Geert Hofstede.

But, according to Iacovou, economics is equally important, with Danes and other Scandinavians enjoying generally high salaries, high levels of employment and the support of a generous welfare state. “A lot of it is about money,” she says. “To live alone, you need to be able to afford to live alone, because living alone is probably the most expensive living arrangement.”

Engstrøm points out that in Denmark citizens receive money from the government for rent if they have a low income, to study if they’re young, and for child support if, like her, they’re divorced.

“The Danish welfare system supports being single,” she says. “It’s in the culture. You just want to leave the family home as quickly as possible, and because the welfare state supports it, it’s possible.”

Living alone does not necessarily mean being lonely, Danielsen argues, saying that she meets others often in cafes and restaurants. “There are a lot of really beautiful gardens hidden away behind the houses in Copenhagen, and people hang out there in the summer and do cook-ups. A lot of social engagement and a lot of friendships come from living in the same building,” she says. “I have a big group of friends that I love, but I really need at some point to come back to a place where it’s really quiet where I can recharge.”

Johannes Andersen, a social scientist at Aalborg University who has studied the growth of alene-kultur, argues that Denmark’s extreme level of single-living is giving birth to a new type of flexible community, with growing numbers spending their evenings at food clubs, book groups and film clubs.

The change is starting to affect the housing stock, with the number of one-person flats, and small terraced and courtyard houses of between 80 and 130 square metres, growing from 7% to 13% of housing since 1981, according to figures from the Danish Association of Chartered Estate Agents.

There is another side, though. According to a 2010 article by Kirsten Gram-Hanssen, a professor at the Danish Building Research Institute, also at Aalborg University, Danes who live alone seem to be significantly less happy.

“The notion of young, urban people living alone and enjoying life is not the picture that emerges,” she wrote.

While half of those who lived with others describe themselves as “very happy”, that goes for less than a third of those living alone – “a very significant difference”, according to Gram-Hanssen.

Indeed, Denmark hasn’t only seen growth in the number of adults who live alone; it has also witnessed an increase in the number of adults who are not in any relationship at all.

Statistics Denmark reported in January that the proportion of single Danes had hit an all-time record of 37%, up from 32% in 1986.

A 2013 study by the agency found that one in 12 Danes between the ages of 30 and 50 either seldom or never met any friends, or seldom or never met their family. “That’s the other side of an individualistic society; for better or for worse, you don’t have your family like you have in Italy,” Engstrøm points out. “In the Scandinavian countries we have the welfare system, but the welfare system doesn’t love you, and hopefully your family does.”

That’s perhaps part of the reason why in Copenhagen, which was hit harder by the global financial crisis than any other city in Scandinavia, and where property prices have been soaring, the process is beginning to turn.

While over the past two decades the proportion of Danes who live alone has climbed more than two percentage points to 23.7%, the proportion in Copenhagen has fallen markedly from 38% to 28.5%.

Oslo, the Norwegian capital, is now the European city with the highest share of single-person households, at 53%.

“From the tiny little bubble in which I live, creative Copenhagen and the NGO environment, I do think that things are changing,” Danielsen says, adding that she has herself started looking into sharing a living space.

Several of the one-person apartments in her building have been combined with the one next door to create a bigger living space, she points out. “It seems that there are many people who are interested in that way of living, and also politically they want to live a bit more that way. I do find it a little bit ridiculous that I, as one person, have this flat.”

But that would mean saying goodbye to her idyllic cobbled street, with the canal in front filled with pleasure boats, the hippy haven of Freetown Christiania a few blocks behind, and the Danish parliament — where Borgen’s Kasper and Katrine conspire and machinate — just a two-minute cycle-hop across the bridge. “It’s very nice,” she concedes. “And I will never get a flat like this again if I sell it.”