“They invaded us once by boat, and now they’re doing it with sperm!” Playful headlines like this are rapidly making Danish donor sperm as renowned as Danish bacon, Lego and designer furniture.

You may not (yet) be aware that Denmark is considered “the sperm capital of the world”. Apart from the US, it is the only country that not only fulfils its own demand for sperm through private sperm banks, but exports donor sperm to more than 100 countries.

This development feels surprising in a country like Denmark, where the welfare state provides universal, free healthcare and places a strong emphasis on reproductive care.

In other European countries such as Belgium and the Netherlands, an estimated 60% of children born after sperm donation were conceived using Danish sperm. In Denmark itself, it’s estimated that around one in every 100 children is now born using donor sperm.

Health Gap / Sundhedskløften is a collaborative series from The Conversation UK and Denmark’s Videnskab.dk exploring what the two countries can learn from each other when it comes to health and wellbeing.

From cycling and alcohol to inequality, healthcare and everyday habits, the series looks beyond hospitals and medical treatment to explore how culture, politics and society shape the way people live – and how healthy they are.

The rise of frozen sperm

So how did Denmark come to dominate the global sperm trade? Well, the introduction of cryotechnology in the 1950s changed things forever. Sperm could now be frozen, stored and transported, making donation safer, more flexible and, more importantly, scalable.

Freezing enabled screening for sexually transmitted infections after donation, reducing transmission........

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