DenNor to the People

He learns a lot during early-morning, insomnia-riddled travels.

Before, it would’ve been too mad to even consider, yet now makes perfect sense. In recent weeks, he’s become used to rising from Denmark’s warm bed, leaving the sheets rumpled and the other nation still slumbering. There’s no use lying restlessly in bed, not when his mind’s as tumultuous as it is, and not when he’s longing to rise up and move. Reading won’t send him to sleep, and the artificial sleep of pills will come back to haunt him in due course if he gives into their tantalising offers.

The only foreseeable option remains, as his legs ache and mind works through a makeshift map of the city. Norway throws on his winter coat; shoves his house keys in one pocket; and sets out on a three o'clock meander through sleeping Copenhagen, greeted by the dusky blue of the morning sky.