Well, he should just come down to earth and take a trip to Djursland where we live. Turn off the tarmac road between Feldballe and Kolind at the sign for ”New potatoes”. Park the car at the edge of the road in the viper’s bugloss and head off on a walk. Within an hour and a couple of miles, he would see at least 4 buzzards and 2 kestrels, a flock of partridges, many pheasants and small birds here, there and everywhere. He would also hear them. He would be able to pick a bunch of 50 different wild flowers and, if he were to come in June, the broom would be in flower – bright and fragrant on the side of the little hill.

That walk would take him through a pocket of whispering pine-trees, past a row of old, gnarled alders and along a stream bursting with reeds and birdsong, past bogland of willow scrub and toads, bring him face to face with a herd of light brown cows, let him hear a large chorus of bleating sheep and perhaps show him an old man on a tractor, or a whole family bringing in the hay.

Now, if he had brought the family on this walk and they had remembered to bring the picnic hamper, at some stage they would be moved to sit awhile on a field, because they would have just talked to the landowner and asked his permission. And so there they would sit for an hour or more, because they could see so far and so much, because the grass and the flowers would be so fragrant and the sky so full of larks.

They wouldn’t make it to The Old Town open-air museum in Århus or the Agricultural museum at Gl. Estrup that day because, on the way back to the car, they would have passed a large patch of yellow cudweed and so the children would want to pick bunches of them and make garlands. And by the sheep enclosure, they would discover a ewe with her newborn, and while away their time just watching the little lamb.

And a Russian or a Swede, or anyone else at all for that matter, would be able to do this in countless places in Denmark. Because, while it might be true to say that we don’t have much in the way of wild nature in Denmark, we do have an abundance of great and small fields, great and small forests, hedgerows, scrub, waterways, lakes, flowering ditches. And running through this varied cultural landscape there is just as great a multitude of roads, small tracks, forest trails and field lanes. They are open to access by anyone, as long as you leave the car behind and otherwise respect private signs and naturally refrain from trespassing on cultivated fields without first obtaining permission.

The standard tourist brochures rarely draw attention to this very logical public right of access to the countryside in Denmark. We have got so used to going everywhere by car, and any walking we do tends to be along designated and well-mapped routes – and the field lanes simply aren’t part of this scheme. But the natural lanes are out there, part of the real, living Denmark – all you have to do is stop and explore, in the same way that you might in Norway or in Switzerland, where no-one would dream of exploring the countryside from inside a car.

Or in the way you might on a day at the beach, by the sea. A walk along the shore can be magical and uplifting because the water, light quality, sound and motion of the waves are fascinating to all of us – perhaps because the landscape there is so very open. Look far into the distance and Man is but a tiny thing and Nature so much larger than life.

The great and indisputable virtue of the Danish countryside is its openness. Because we have worked the land for thousands of years, the landscape stretches out open for us to see and sense and explore. Most of us have experienced that feeling of liberation at the end of a walk in the forest when we emerge and can once more survey the wide world we live in, work in, spend our holidays in.

That is Denmark’s Nature. It fills nine tenths of our country. Every summer and winter included, for those who would explore it.