During an Italian lesson I was having with a Danish lady some years ago, I happened to complain about how cold these Danes are, a perception I share with most of the 'warm-blooded' foreigners living here.

To support my thesis I gave the example of me standing at the bus stop, waiting for the bus to come for looong minutes, with 3-4 more people around me saying... nothing at all! Nobody would say anything, not even about the weather; nobody would talk about any recent news or complain about a bus that is late (well, that doesn't even happen often here).

I admitted I had stopped trying to start any conversation, because it was always one-sided, and I was fed up with that. Then she told me: "That was wrong, you shouldn't have stopped. We Danes have this problem, we're very introverted, and you foreigners have a duty: to teach us how to be more outgoing". I had never seen the situation from that point of view, so what I'm saying is: let's help these Danes!