Livre d'Or

I found it really interesting living in Denmark when we became very friendly with our next door neighbours. They were a couple in a fairly dysfunctional marriage, with 2 teenage daughters. One was traditionally Scandinavian-looking, tall blonde & fair, taking after her mother. The other was dark-haired, brown-eyed and slightly darker-skinned, like her father, and people often thought she was Italian. We didn't talk about it much, but the older daughter did occasionally remark that strangers didn't always expect her to be Danish. Which seemed very othering for her.

It must be curious living in a country with a strong sense of appearance being tied to national identity, if you are in fact a member of that national group but don't conform to the image. That's one way in which England doesn't fit the stereotype, I don't think, because even (the ever-shrinking group of) people who still assume that English-looking=white tend not to go *much* further than that, even the real wingnuts.