in both Denmark and Iceland it's common for teenagers to have jobs. I'm a bit less clear on the rules and job types in Iceland since I was 11 when I left, but I do know that the most common (and popular) job for teenagers to have are summer jobs for the state/municipality - this is stuff like mowing lawns in public areas, painting signs, trimming hedges, gardening (under supervision), trash collecting, and whatnot. city maintenance. my impression of this was always that it was a fun time so I looked forward to be able to do the same once I was old enough. the teenagers I saw out and about during the summer working these jobs always seemed to have a great time, and I had older cousins who'd done the jobs and were pretty happy about them. (I later learned that this summer job programme was instituted by the government in the 80s as part of a larger social scheme to bring down youth crime/vandalism, youth drinking/substance abuse and the like, by giving them something to do and paying them generously. another part of the scheme was curfews for kids - by keeping them at home at night there was less opportunity for them to get into trouble. I never thought it was weird there was a nation wide curfew for kids under 18 until I left the country and people looked at me funny if I mentioned it! anyway the scheme worked, all the bad statistics plummeted and the good ones soared.)
in Denmark children can start working at 13, with restrictions. usually the kind of jobs available to kids at that age are things like newspaper deliveries on weekends, or 'bottle boy' jobs at supermarkets - being a 'bottle boy' means you look after the recycled bottles and don't have any contact with customers. simple, easy jobs that only take up a few hours and pay a little pocket money. I can't remember at what age other jobs are possible but I suspect it's 14 - historically 14 was when you were confirmed and could leave school and start working full time, so there is a kind of rite of passage associated with this age and particularly the confirmation, which is also typically when kids get to taste alcohol for the first time.
having a job as a teenager in Denmark is considered character building. it's not about the pocket money. (kids from poor families will tell you otherwise though. in my family it wasn't about character building; we were poor.) so if a teenager doesn't have a job it can be a bit like, oh so your child is lazy? your child doesn't want to work? your child is setting themselves up for failure, it'll be so much harder for them to get a part time job once they're of age if they don't get one now! so there's a lot of social pressure on kids to have a job. personally I think this is a two-edged sword; sure kids acquire skills having jobs that are useful later in life, like navigating employment and colleagues and managers and work schedules and all that, but on the other hand it eats into their free time a lot and between school, work, and potential other activities (sports, music, etc.) kids often wind up not having any downtime at all which I don't think is very healthy.
high school in Denmark is 15-18 and this is the period when most teenagers have jobs so they can earn money to buy their own clothes or go to parties and/or buy alcohol or whatever they want money for. at 18 many teenagers quit their jobs because at this point they can receive (free) student grant from the government if they are in secondary or tertiary education. I had a supermarket job for a summer at 15 (my first job) where I restocked shelves and stuff like that (I refused to work the tills because I didn't want responsibility for money) but didn't have another job again until I was 18 and was in high school - I'm a bit of an outlier because I went to boarding school for two years between finishing my 9 years of mandatory education and starting high school, so I was a lot older than my peers and also couldn't work while in boarding school - and wanted to supplement my student grant income. so I worked in a small family owned bakery for my last 2 years in high school. it worked out great for me financially because as over 18 I got paid like an adult instead of a child for what was meant to be a teenage (under 18) job, but my employer didn't actually mind because I was very good at my job, punctual, and almost always willing to cover extra shifts (I only turned down a shift once) so he thought it was worth it.
common jobs in my area at the time, which was very rural, was summer jobs in holiday resorts/hotels - Lalandia employed a lot of kids as dishwashers and servers and cashiers - and in farming, especially strawberry picking, which does require a human touch (potatoes and sugar beets were the other big crops in the area, but those are machine harvested). the twins, who were the only ones of my siblings old enough to work when we lived there, had jobs doing all of those things. my sister worked at a local hotel year round on weekends, my brother was a dishwasher for a restaurant in Lalandia year round on weekends, and both took extra jobs during the summer as strawberry pickers or in Lalandia or on the ferry to Germany. (I considered taking a job on the ferry but I didn't want to do the disaster course on top of the first aid course + I could easily pick up more shifts at the bakery as there was one other student working there alternative weekends who often wanted to offload shifts so she could party/go on vacation + the full time adult staff took summer holidays I could then cover. (I didn't go to many parties myself, lol.))
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in Denmark children can start working at 13, with restrictions. usually the kind of jobs available to kids at that age are things like newspaper deliveries on weekends, or 'bottle boy' jobs at supermarkets - being a 'bottle boy' means you look after the recycled bottles and don't have any contact with customers. simple, easy jobs that only take up a few hours and pay a little pocket money. I can't remember at what age other jobs are possible but I suspect it's 14 - historically 14 was when you were confirmed and could leave school and start working full time, so there is a kind of rite of passage associated with this age and particularly the confirmation, which is also typically when kids get to taste alcohol for the first time.
having a job as a teenager in Denmark is considered character building. it's not about the pocket money. (kids from poor families will tell you otherwise though. in my family it wasn't about character building; we were poor.) so if a teenager doesn't have a job it can be a bit like, oh so your child is lazy? your child doesn't want to work? your child is setting themselves up for failure, it'll be so much harder for them to get a part time job once they're of age if they don't get one now! so there's a lot of social pressure on kids to have a job. personally I think this is a two-edged sword; sure kids acquire skills having jobs that are useful later in life, like navigating employment and colleagues and managers and work schedules and all that, but on the other hand it eats into their free time a lot and between school, work, and potential other activities (sports, music, etc.) kids often wind up not having any downtime at all which I don't think is very healthy.
high school in Denmark is 15-18 and this is the period when most teenagers have jobs so they can earn money to buy their own clothes or go to parties and/or buy alcohol or whatever they want money for. at 18 many teenagers quit their jobs because at this point they can receive (free) student grant from the government if they are in secondary or tertiary education. I had a supermarket job for a summer at 15 (my first job) where I restocked shelves and stuff like that (I refused to work the tills because I didn't want responsibility for money) but didn't have another job again until I was 18 and was in high school - I'm a bit of an outlier because I went to boarding school for two years between finishing my 9 years of mandatory education and starting high school, so I was a lot older than my peers and also couldn't work while in boarding school - and wanted to supplement my student grant income. so I worked in a small family owned bakery for my last 2 years in high school. it worked out great for me financially because as over 18 I got paid like an adult instead of a child for what was meant to be a teenage (under 18) job, but my employer didn't actually mind because I was very good at my job, punctual, and almost always willing to cover extra shifts (I only turned down a shift once) so he thought it was worth it.
common jobs in my area at the time, which was very rural, was summer jobs in holiday resorts/hotels - Lalandia employed a lot of kids as dishwashers and servers and cashiers - and in farming, especially strawberry picking, which does require a human touch (potatoes and sugar beets were the other big crops in the area, but those are machine harvested). the twins, who were the only ones of my siblings old enough to work when we lived there, had jobs doing all of those things. my sister worked at a local hotel year round on weekends, my brother was a dishwasher for a restaurant in Lalandia year round on weekends, and both took extra jobs during the summer as strawberry pickers or in Lalandia or on the ferry to Germany. (I considered taking a job on the ferry but I didn't want to do the disaster course on top of the first aid course + I could easily pick up more shifts at the bakery as there was one other student working there alternative weekends who often wanted to offload shifts so she could party/go on vacation + the full time adult staff took summer holidays I could then cover. (I didn't go to many parties myself, lol.))