The Danish brick is the basis of almost every Danish home, school, church, and public building. 95% of Danish single-family homes have a brick facade, and builders of concrete apartment blocks sometimes put fake bricks across the surface to make them look warm and homey.
Denmark doesn't have Sweden's extensive forests, the source of the Sweden's classic red wooden houses, and it doesn't have the big stone deposits used for building in southern Europe and Britain.
What it does have is clay, and it's been using that clay for nearly a thousand years to make bricks.
The first bricks were called "monk stones", since they were made primarily by monks. They were larger than most contemporary bricks, closer to the size of a shoebox.
And they were largely red. Red brick, from the red clay that lies closest to the surface in Denmark, was the preferred color of bricks for centuries.
If you made yellow bricks, from the slightly lower layer of clay, you used them in some inconspicuous place and put your fancy red bricks out front.
But that all changed in the 1930s, when the newly-founded Aarhus University was building its campus.
A local brick company offered one million yellow bricks free of charge, and the architects accepted.
Yellow bricks suddenly looked chic and modern, and began to be used much more widely in prominent buildings.
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The How to Live in Denmark podcast is the longest-running English-language podcast in Denmark, and one of the leading English-language resources on Danish culture and everyday life.
The podcast host is Kay Xander Mellish, an American author, speaker, and cultural commentator who has lived in Copenhagen, Denmark, for more than 25 years.
Kay frequently speaks to business delegations visiting Copenhagen about Danish working culture, and she also offers orientation to student groups and study tours coming to Denmark.
She also offers workshops and presentations for Danish companies working with Americans, or US companies who want to understand doing business in Denmark, and to Danish companies with Danes and internationals who want to work better together.
Kay is the author of several books including How to Live in Denmark, How to Work in Denmark, and The Danish Year. Her work combines firsthand experience, careful observation, and a dry sense of humor to explain not just what Danes do, but why they do it.
She lives in Copenhagen.