An Italian shop worker in Copenhagen says one of the things he still struggles with after two decades in Denmark is surprisingly simple: customers who enter a shop without saying hello, often absorbed in their phones or wearing headphones.
Daniele Bresemann Iannella, 53, works at Supermarco, an Italian supermarket in Copenhagen’s Sydhavn district. He told TV 2 Kosmopol that he regularly tries to greet customers at the checkout without getting any response.
In one case, he recalled saying hello several times to a customer before trying “have a nice day”, again without receiving an answer. It is something he has experienced for years, but says he still finds difficult to accept.
Phones and headphones create a barrier
For Bresemann Iannella, the issue is not simply about politeness. He sees phones and noise-cancelling headphones as a barrier to the small, spontaneous interactions that can happen between strangers during everyday life.
“I try to show that I want to talk to people, but I often meet a wall.”
He experiences the same thing outside work. Bresemann Iannella lives in Holbæk and commutes to Copenhagen, where he sometimes tries to start conversations with other passengers.
He is not the only person to have noticed the phenomenon. Rasmus Storm, the former owner of Copenhagen fashion store Storm, told TV 2 Kosmopol’s Københavneriet podcast that he had seen customers walk through his shop with headphones on without acknowledging staff or saying hello or goodbye.
An Italian contrast
Bresemann Iannella comes from a small town near Naples, and his experience of everyday social interaction in Italy provides a sharp contrast with what he encounters in Denmark.
“If you go into a bar in Italy without knowing anyone, five minutes later you are sitting with four new people, talking and drinking coffee.”
He says he misses the openness he associates with Italy, including the possibility of striking up a conversation with the person sitting nearby on a train or in a café.
But his point is not simply that Italians talk and Danes do not. Bresemann Iannella says that once the initial barrier has been crossed, he often finds that people in Denmark are happy to talk. His frustration is with how difficult that first contact can sometimes be.
Why small everyday interactions matter
The concern also has a wider social dimension. Rikke Lund, professor of social medicine and life-course research at the University of Copenhagen, studies the relationship between social connections, health and ageing. Her research at the University of Copenhagen includes work on social networks, loneliness and the effects of social relations on health.
Lund told TV 2 Kosmopol that informal interactions during daily life can matter for people’s wellbeing. She expressed concern that phones and increasingly effective noise-cancelling headphones could make the barrier between strangers even stronger, particularly within what she described as an already relatively inward-looking Nordic culture.
The setting is itself distinctly Italian. Supermarco describes itself as Denmark’s largest importer of Italian specialities, with more than 5,000 products as well as a café and delicatessen in Sydhavn.
For Bresemann Iannella, however, the most Italian thing he would like to bring into Copenhagen’s everyday life may be much simpler than food or coffee: the willingness to acknowledge a stranger and see where a conversation leads.
