We happy Danes, we band of brothers

Hamlet, the most famous Dane of them all, was both fictional and glum. Yet, Sally Laird argues in her Opinion piece for the latest issue of Prospect, real Danes in modern Denmark are the happiest people in the world (according to the best recent investigations into such matters).

They're not the most economically successful, or the cleanest-living, or the most demanding. But a national emphasis on shared experiences and a "gift for being properly ceremonious without being solemn" have created a society happier simply to be itself than anywhere else on earth.

It's also a place that might, just, remind the rest of us that man can hand on more than misery to man—given half a chance and a properly assembled plate of herring sandwiches.