DANISH SCOUTS - FALL 1991

When my family and I participated in Denmark's International Studies program (DIS) in Denmark in the fall of 1991, my son and I participated in a scout troop that was co-ed, and my wife and daughter participated in a scout troop that was for girls. Back in Whittier I was an assistant scoutmaster for my son's Boy Scout troop, and my wife was a leader for my daughter's Girl Scout troop. This journal describes our experiences and what we learned about scout troops in Denmark.

I learned that there were Blue scouts that originally had separate organizations for Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, and that these organizations merged together in 1973. The Green scouts also had separate organizations for boys (started by YMCA) and girls (started by YWCA), but their national organizations did not get along so they did not merge. Instead, the Green boy scouts decided to become coed. So there is a Green scout organization for boys and girls (YMCA Scouts), and a separate Green scout organization for girls (YWCA Girl Guides).

While my son and I joined a Green scout YMCA coed group where we were living in Lyngby, my wife and daughter joined a Green scout YWCA Girl Guide group in another town.

SCOUT MEETINGS OF THE LYNGBY GROUP

The scouts (age 11-14) met on Wednesdays from 7- 9 PM. The senior scouts (age 14-17) also met with them and served as patrol leaders for the scouts. In addition the senior scouts meet separately once every two weeks. They met in the basement of the parish hall of a church half a mile away. I found a couple of used bikes through some classified ads, so my son and I rode there by bike (as did most of the others).

Including my son, there were 12 boys and 12 girls altogether, and they had been divided into 4 patrols with 6 persons each. Two of the patrols had all girls and two had all boys, including the patrol leaders. (In some Groups the boys and girls are mixed in patrols; it's up to each Group).

In addition to the main meeting room, each patrol had its own small room, where they could meet and also display awards and crafts. There were many leather craft items hanging on the walls in the various rooms. (The same rooms were used by the other scout age groups too at different times during the week).

At the first meeting we attended August 28, there was an opening ceremony which included a scout song. They divided into patrols which met separately for a brief time, then rotated through a series of activities outside. The activities included the following: identifying knots while blindfolded; finding and identifying 6 kinds of leaves; calculating the number of seconds in a year; and each person singing the next word in a song from a songbook.

Everyone then played a game of cat and mouse together outside. As one person (the cat) chased another (the mouse), everyone else stood in in rows with their hands touching. When the leader called "change," everyone rotated their arms to forms rows in the other direction (from north-south to east-west). This would create or remove barriers between the cat and the mouse. The game was a lot of fun, and I liked the fact that everyone was actively involved in the game at the same time, not just the two people running. The meeting was then closed with another song.

At the meeting September 4, the patrols did a service project (delivering newsletters around the neighborhood for the church), while the adult leaders for all age groups held their monthly leaders' meeting. It was all in Danish, so one of the leaders summarized parts of it in English for me. The leaders for each age group reported on the numbers of members and their plans for future activities.

I wasn't able to attend the meeting September 11, because it was parents' night at my daughter's high school. So one of the other boys came by on his bike and he and my son rode their bikes together to the meeting. They spent the meeting checking over their bikes for an upcoming 20-mile bike-camping trip, and practicing first aid.

SCOUT ACTIVITY DAY

To recruit new members (and to provide scout activities for the scouts in all age groups), the Lyngby Group held an activity day in a park in the center of Lyngby on Saturday August 31. The activities and displays included the following:

a. They pitched a tent. Actually, it was two tents joined by a tarp for a patio. Interestingly, the tents had no floors. This is true of scout tents here in general (except for backpack tents).

b. They demonstrated lashing by creating what looked like a teepee with a railing around the edge.

c. They demonstrated cooking by baking small lumps of bread in an oven over a wood fire. They still do their camp cooking over wood fires. Later they popped popcorn by tying two large kitchen mesh-wire strainers together with wire and tying them to a stick. Before they built the fire, they carefully dug up squares of sod to reveal bare dirt; after they finished cooking, they poured water on the fire and removed remaining pieces of wood, then replaced the sod and poured water on it.

d. They demonstrated pioneering by making camp stools. The adults used a chain saw to cut off a section of a log and split it in half. The boys then used a hand drill to drill holes for 3 legs, and used an axe to cut sticks for the legs. The drilling was a lot of work, so they only made about 3 stools. Making camp stools and camp tables are typical pioneering activities here. I noted that they did not rope off an axe yard, although the axe was in a corner out of the way.

e. They made a raft using tree boughs and a tarp. They pounded sticks into the ground in a circle about 4 feet in diameter. They then wove the tree boughs in and out around the circle to create a wreath about a foot thick. They then lifted the wreath and put in on a tarp. They pulled the tarp up and tied it around the boughs, with ropes across the diameter to keep it together. Then they floated in a stream next to the park. Various people took turns riding in the raft, holding a rope which was also held on shore.

f. Parents served coffee, soda, and Danish pastry to the scouts and visitors, and gave out brochures telling about the Green scouts and the Lynbgy group. Everyone was given a tag to wear which said "Spejder for en dag" which means "Scout for a day."

I found it interesting to watch, and I think the scouts and visitors had a lot of fun. As a result, eight new scouts were recruited. There also was a picture of the activity in the local free newspaper which has supermarket ads.

SCOUT LEADER PARTY

The same evening as the activity day, there was a party for the leaders and the parent support group. It was held in a scout house in a neighboring town, because there was some problem with the local scout house. For the opening, we sang a song and played cat and mouse outside, then we went inside for an Indonesian dinner with Danish beer and donated Greek wine, followed by coffee and cheesecake. Everyone stayed and talked until 1 AM. It was fun.

I met a leader who had just returned from the world jamboree in Korea, and a parent whose family had hosted students from Whittier College on the exchange program I am participating in. In addition, one of parents who had cooked the dinner was married to a man from England, who told me about his perspective on Danish life.

REVIEW OF SUMMER CAMP EXPERIENCES

On Thursday September 12, there was a meeting for all age groups and their parents to learn about summer camp experiences. Each age group had spent a week in a different camping environment.

The senior scouts (14-17) had gone on a 35-mile back-pack trip in Norway. They showed slides in which they were hiking up gentle mountain slopes with rocky terrain. The scouts (11-14) had camped for a week in the woods in Sweden; they also showed slides. The younger groups had each gone to a different island in Denmark. One of them showed a videotape which was pretty funny; in one scene, they had gotten muddy and all lined up to have their feet washed. In addition, there were some slides of the world jamboree in Korea.

After each group made its presentation, everyone sang a scout song. I had studied enough Danish by then that I could understand a few of the words in the songbook to tell what the songs were about! Near the end, the senior scouts did a skit in which they wore sunglasses and pretended to be a rock group. And throughout the meeting everyone had coffee and soda, and Danish pastry.

TRAINING SESSION FOR LEADERS

On September 14, I attended part of a weekend training session for new scout leaders. The Green scouts divide Denmark into 7 districts, and the one we were in was the North Zealand district (it's the northern half of the large island on which Copenhagen is located). The district owns a scout center, called Arreso/centret, on a large lake about 45 minutes northwest of Lyngby. In the summer, it was used for week-long summer camp sessions, with activities provided similar to summer camps near LA. In the winter, it's used on weekends for training and for outings by individual scout groups.

The scout center used to be a farm, but the 150-year old farm buildings have been remodeled to provide a cafeteria, meeting rooms, and some dormitory space. There are woods and meadows with enough room for several hundred campers, and the center provides tents and small sailboats.

The head of training for the district is in the Lyngby group, so he invited me to see the camp and the training session. There were 5 trainers and a dozen new leaders (there should have been more but there was some problem with printing and mailing the invitations). They were there for the weekend, while I only stayed until mid-afternoon. The leaders were for various age groups.

The training activities included setting up and taking down tents, practicing lashing by building a monkey bridge, teaching & motivation techniques, map & compass, cooking, flag ceremonies, campfires, etc. In general, they were similar to the kinds of things covered in the Webelos leader and Scout leader training sessions that I had attended in Rio Hondo district back home in Whittier, CA.

They asked me to talk a little about how scouting is organized in America, and American leader training activities. In conversations afterward, I learned that they have the equivalent of Wood Badge training, but they do not have the Backpack Training offered by the LAAC High Adventure Team. They have a strong leadership organization across age groups in the Lyngby Group, but there is nothing comparable to Roundtable at the District level. The District has a camporee only once every two or three years, but they would like to make it once a year.

I also learned that they no longer have scout ranks like tenderfoot, second class, first class, etc. They eliminated them in 1975 because they felt that emphasizing status differences was not consistent with Danish life. Instead, they emphasize scout skills in 9 areas (community, church, first aid, nature, orienteering, pioneering, camping, etc.) at three levels of expertise. A whole patrol works on these together. They do have merit badges, but they are not required for "advancement" since there is no advancement in the sense of scout ranks. When they do work on merit badges, they usually do it as a group.

In general, the Green scout program here emphasizes community, scout skills, and having fun, without emphasizing individual achievement. I don't know if this is true of the Blue scout program as well. But it does seem consistent with the difference between Danish and American cultural values. Americans stress competition and individual achievement more than most cultures, while many cultures place more emphasis on the welfare of the group.

I see strengths and weaknesses in their program, just as I see strengths and weaknesses in the way scouting is organized in the U.S. One final difference I'll mention before closing concerns funding. The national office of the scouts in Denmark is supported by the Danish government, and the local Groups are supported by funds from the local municipalities. This means that they haven't had to do the kind of fund-raising that is necessary in the U.S. On the other hand, they pay between 50% and 68% of their income in taxes, so they expect social services such as free medical treatment, free schools including college, and support for youth groups and youth sports.