Meet the Danes

A rollicking satire of 1980s US pop culture disastrously transplanted into an unwary fairy-tale land.

It doesn’t matter, you’ll be okay

The poignant story of what really happened when Mark and Karin moved to Denmark.

Photo: Thomas Lill Madsen.

Mark Perrino was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and grew up in Corvallis, Detroit, Spokane, Seattle, Lancaster (PA), and Schenectady. After attending four colleges and working at a variety of jobs, he earned a Ph.D. in English literature at Columbia University and wrote The Poetics of Mockery, a study of the British modernist Wyndham Lewis. He has taught at Manhattan College, worked in corporate communications in New York and Copenhagen, and done freelance editing and translation.
He has published two books during the pandemic. The novel Meet the Danes is a whimsical satire based on an imaginary emigration to his wife’s homeland in 1988. Six years later, they did move to Denmark, and the memoir It doesn’t matter, you’ll be okay tells a more sobering tale of frailty and endurance. He has also written The Happiest People blog since 2016. He has an adult son and now lives in Elsinore, Denmark.

Blog: The Happiest People

Announcement: Moving to Substack

This blog is moving to the Substack platform. This is the last post that will appear on markperrino.com/blog. If you subscribed here before November 30, you will be automatically subscribed to the Substack version. If not, please go to markperrino.substack.com,...

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown

The times they are a-changin’ for the Danish and British royals. The Danes have lagged far behind their British counterparts in the way of scandal, feuding, and gossip, but perhaps they can gain a little ground. Danish Queen Margrethe II...

Can the north winds power Europe?

Like the rest of the world, Denmark could use some good news for a change. For the second year in a row, the country ranked first on the Environmental Performance Index, a leading measure of sustainability (the US came in...

Subscribe to newsletter