Introduction
   Career suicide?
   Career suicide checklist
   Humour events: sinking or swimming?
   Does your humour fit in? A question of humour socialisation
   Your humour voyage
   The authors, their ambitions and empirical data
   Our goals and reasons for revisiting humorous 'crime scenes'

PART I. The 'charms' of Danish humour
Chapter 1. Happiness, alcohol and sex
   A heady Danish humour cocktail
   Danish conversational humour has no limits
   So what is humour?
   Defining humour
      Surprise and incongruity
   Irony
   Self-irony
   More Danish wisdom with lashings of irony
      Sérieusement?
   Charting progress
   Humour in an academic context

Chapter 2. Authority, formality and privacy
   Police, passports and personal comments
   Humour events – from failure to success
   Humour and the private life/work life divide
   Professional roles and private personas
      Is it hot in here?
   Cancelling a humour event
   Work culture incongruity
   Charting progress

Chapter 3. Rocking the boat with laughter
   Virtual hilarity
      What a circus!
   Laughter
   The relief theory of laughter
   Feeling superior?
   The superiority theory of laughter
   Relief or superiority?
   Laughing in Parliaments
   Charting progress
   Anchor points from Part I

PART II. The strengths of Danish society
Chapter 4. The Danes and their "Great Humour"
   Another round in the Danish political circus
   Travelling light with Danish politicians
   Humour in international politics
   The triple A model
   "Shamelessly rude" Danish humour – straight from the horse's mouth
   Stereotypes
   Humour socialisation
   Humour breeding and Great Humour as an attitude to life
   How Danes are bred into their Great Humour
   What makes you smile?
   Who is in charge of our humour breeding?
      Fear and fun in humour breeding
   Charting progress

Chapter 5. Humour civilisation
   The towel, the turban and a twist of Danish humour
   Danes' dumb-smart comments
   From Great Humour to national styles of humour
   The civilising process
   A quick glance at Danish history
      Denmark as a tribe seen from outside
   Danes and their campfire mentality
   Trust and the French court society
   British society in broad brushstrokes
   From humour breeding and socialisation to humour civilisation
   Campfire, court and clowns
   More shaking up the mix with royal Danish humour
   Charting progress

Chapter 6. Humour, irony and self-irony in Danish management
   Campfire football
   A Danish dress-code faux pas
   Self-irony as a Danish antidote to self-importance
   Self-irony as a "reflexive management practice"
      Roles and personas
   In humour and irony, we trust
   A business merger comes unstuck
      A good leader
   Other norms in workplace culture
      Humour as a leadership tool in other hands
   Win-win or lose out
      Performance versus the common good
   Charting progress
   Anchor points from Part II

PART III. The baffling Danish language
Chapter 7. Language and spontaneous verbal humour
   Language and verbal humour – in general
      Easy rider
      Humour in a foreign language
   Using humour – a case for linguistic pragmatics
   Logic and conversation
      The Cooperative Principle
      Conversational implicatures – or 'gangplanks'
      The rules of conversation
      Conversational humour implicatures
   How to interpret Danish irony
   Danish humour – gangway!
   Charting progress

Chapter 8. Meeting the Danish language
   The difficulties of understanding and learning Danish
      Say it again, Dane!
   Vowelling at the moon
   Inconstant consonants
   Glottal gulping
      A fish with a catch
   Words, words, words
      The gender trap
      All steamed up
   Context is key, but hard to find
   Uplifting humour
   Safety in numbers? Not likely
      Bingo!
   Focus on the positive
   Danes speaking foreign languages
      A sticky situation
   Danes speaking English
      Saving face
      Please!
      Polite conversation and small talk
      Goats and kangaroos
      Compliments and honesty
      The soft Danish 'no'
   Charting progress

Chapter 9. Fathoming the Danish language and humour
   Misfired Danish humour events – in a lingua franca
   Humour warning signals
   Verbal triggers that make Danes fit for wit
   Danish humour – in Danish
      Lars von Trier's missing links
      Mobilising a full arsenal to save the French scientist from trauma
      Another round of alcohol and sex – in Danish
   Small conversational trigger words and their intricate meanings
   Small conversational trigger words and Danish-speaking non-Danes
   Language and national mentality
   Charting progress
   Anchor points from Part III

Chapter 10. Conclusion
   Reaching port in one piece
   Gelotophobia
   Are Danes less tough than they think they are?
   Laughter and unlaughter
   Be brave but responsible
   Land Ho! A happy ending

Acknowledgements
References