Mette Frederiksen

Mette Frederiksen, Denmark’s prime minister, describes herself as fundamentally fearless — not afraid of death, not afraid of life, and not afraid to take responsibility for decisions. But in the same conversation, she admits she recently had to tell her husband to stop asking her how she feels every day, because she cannot always afford to notice. That tension — between an unshakable core and the armor required to lead through crisis — runs through this entire interview with host Sørine Godfredsen, a priest exploring where people find their life force.

The foundation: self-worth before self-confidence

Frederiksen draws a sharp distinction between self-worth and self-confidence. Self-worth, she says, is a gift you receive from being unconditionally loved as a child — and she had that, growing up in a traditional working-class home in Aalborg, in an exposed housing area surrounded by a large Norwegian family. Her mother was a daycare provider, her father a typographer. The home was open and safe. “When you have been given that gift to be a loved one from the start,” she says, “then you establish your self-worth.” Self-confidence, by contrast, can be built or lost. She says she did not always have much of it — as a young girl, she was quiet, tense, and saw a speech therapist for trouble with consonants. But self-worth stayed. It made her fearless in one specific sense: she