February 21, 2006
Nothing Like a Dane
Even before the Muslim backlash over those notorious cartoons, liberal Denmark was under siege from some demons closer to home
Eric Ellis, Copenhagen
DENMARK. Land of 12 dodgy cartoons, a thousand fatwas and…and…well, er, what exactly was Denmark about before the world went temporarily mad over some unremarkable art in a provincial Jutland newspaper?
If the world considered Denmark much at all, it might’ve been Hans Christian Andersen, though we’d likely know his stories – The Ugly Duckling, Thumbelina, Little Mermaid et al – over who wrote them, one of the world’s most translated storytellers. Yuppies of course know that Bang and Olufsen is Danske, and also Arne Jacobsen, who designed the iconic ‘Number 7’ chair with which English temptress Christine Keeler concealed her nakedness, from a titillated British public if not a scandalised John Profumo. There's Carlsberg beer and, oh yes, supermodel Helena Christensen, Michael Hutchence’s ex-squeeze, wasn’t she Danish? (yes, and half-Peruvian.) And Rocky’s squeeze, Brigitte Nielsen, though she was more Amazonian.
Matrons of Malvern and Mosman - but not Macquarie Fields or Maidstone - might have a nice piece of Royal Copenhagen crockery in their ‘good room,’ and maybe some Georg Jensen silverware, but when it boils down, Denmark’s place in our psyche, recently anyway, begins and ends with Tasmanian-born Crown Princess Mary, largely because she isn’t Danish.
How we gushed when she married her handsome prince Fredrik, securing not only the future queendom of Europe’s oldest monarchy but elevation into Australia’s Vegemite Aristocracy, the Sacred Order of the Collective Possessive; 'Our Mary.' And then a perfect baby, a future king too! And called Christian! Danes loved 'Our Mary' too, their own tidy Princess Diana photofit to share with the world. As we clasped "Our Mary” close to the national bosom, we clucked that we were now at one with a perfect European kingdom, of ancient mist-shrouded castles with towering gables and ornate curlicues guarded by soldiers in uniforms of braided plus-fours. Danes loved Our Mary too, a tidy Princess Diana photofit to share with Australia. Fairy tales don’t get better than this.
Before Mary, if Danes regarded their Royal Family much at all, it was with a casual indifference. Since ascending the throne in 1972, Queen Magrethe II had achieved a modest popularity without eliciting much affection. Her French consort Prince Henrik (Danicised from Henri) is thought something of a wimpy dilettante who Danes love to mock for his bad spoken Dansk, thought unforgivable after 40 years in their kingdom. Sons Frederik and Joachim both racily married foreigners, straight Frederik to Mary and playboy Joachim to Hong Kong-born Eurasian Alexandra Manley, who was popular after her 1995 marriage but is now a figure of minor scandal after her affair with a live-in ‘toyboy,’ but more that she continues living at public expense in royal accomodations, despite her divorce.
Mary is different, and phenomenally fashionable. She’s white and, as Danes see it, well-bred and scandal-free with a British academic father who, incidentally, is a guest mathematics lecturer at the University of Arhus, the hometown of Jyllands Posten, the newspaper that first published the Muhammed cartoons. Best of all, “Our Mary” quickly mastered Dansk, the ultimate litmus test of cultural integration.
But hers has indeed been a fairy tale, a fiction worthy of Hans Christian Andersen’s quill. The something about Mary in Denmark is that she is the ‘right’ sort of immigrant, one who came along just at the right time. Her arrival has both rejuvenated the royal family and, oddly for an Australian, re-affirmed the country’s Danishness, at a time when liberal Denmark and its generous equalising welfare state – “few with too much and even fewer with too little” as goes an ironic mantra - feels increasingly vulnerable at being beseiged by immigrants, the euphemism for Muslims. And this, in a country that proudly cites its protection of Jews during World War II and of giving asylum to Cold War communist dissidents as hallmarks of its tolerance and charity.
And Denmark is a model liberal state. Its last slander conviction was before World War II, concerning anti-Semitism. Danes have long been fully-paid and hugely supportive members of the United Nations, and some of the biggest backers of fashionable causes; Tibet, Palestine, Burma, East Timor. In 1989, Denmark was the first country to allow same-sex marriages. Copenhagen’s bohemian prescinct of Christiania is a self-governing ‘freetown’ that has all but seceded from Denmark. (Visitors leaving Christiania walk under an archway that says “You Are Now Entering the EU.”)
Like Canada and Spain, Denmark is quick to provide peacekeeping personnel to international missions. Its artists' murals at the United Nations Security Council remind delegates of conflict's folly. Its independent diplomats help monitor the ceasefire in Sri Lanka, and patrol the streets of Hebron. Its charities kept starving (Muslim) Chechens fed and protected, at least until last week when they were told they were no longer welcome. Danes like it that not much happens in their tiny country. They regard their secularism, their democracy, their harmonious insularity, as sacrosanct, core values the world needs more of.
And Danes expect that of their immigrants, who disappointingly don’t always reciprocate, gathering in ghettoes and not bothering to learn Danish, filching off the generous welfare state that’s supported by some of the world’s highest taxes.
That’s led to rising disquiet among Danes that the cultural fabric of Der Yndigt Land – The Lovely Land, as goes the National Anthem – is being radically altered. This anxiety is given loudest voice by Pia Kjærsgaard, Denmark’s Le Pen figure, albeit with 12% of the vote probably the most politically-accomplished of Europe’s rash of far-rightists who’ve played the anti-immigrant card. Kjærsgaard's People’s Party is the third largest party in the Folketing, Denmark's parliament, becoming an influential member of Ander Fighs Rasmussen’s governing coalition just 10 years after she founded the party. The September 11 attacks in 2001 spooked Danes, who soon after took a sharp turn to the right, voting in the Ventrse Party (which ironically means ‘left’ in Danish”) and bringing the Kjærsgaarders with them on their anti-immigrant ticket. The liberal German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung has described Kjærsgaard as the “black handbag” of the beseiged Rasmussen’s coalition.
And in a country that values its freedom of expression, Kjærsgaard hasn’t held back, mastered the savage soundbite and targetting immigrants and foreigners. Denmark’s neighbours in Sweden, which has maintained the immigrant welcome mat, risk their “cities becoming Scandinavian Beiruts, replete with mass rapes, revenge killings and clan wars,” she says.
“'War of civilisations?” Kjærsgaard recently asked. “There is only one civilisation and it's ours." Her provocative tone is evident on party posters that punctuate the postcard-pleasant countryside, along freeways, in public squares, on railways platforms. One billboard shows an innocent blonde Danish girl gazing out from text that declares “when she retires, Denmark will have a Muslim majority.” The website of Kjærsgaard’s candidate for Copenhagen mayor in October last year reportedly described Muslims as a “cancerous tumour that needed to be removed from Danish society.” Muslim men “seemed to consider it their right to rape Danish women.” As Danes have been assailed by Muslims worldwide over the cartoons in recent weeks, Danish politicians have closed ranks to back Rasmussen and the Jyllands Posten. Kjærsgaard’s response has been to don a previously unseen crucifix necklace, fingering it while doing media interviews. Opinion polls taken as Danish embassies in Syria, Iran, Indonesia and Lebanon were sacked by Muslims show support for the People’s Party to have risen to around 15 per cent.
And yet the curious thing about Denmark, at least from a multicultural Australian view, is just how culturally homogenous it seems. It’s rare, except along Copenhagen's storied Stroget tourist and shopping boulevard, to see any more than a handful of non-Europeans on the streets. Danes claim that's because they've gathered in ghettoes. Muslims claim they've been forced to. In any case, Muslims comprise just 200,000 of Denmark's 5.4 million population, one of Europe's lowest levels. Denmark does not have a purpose-built mosque.
But Mary's very religious mother-in-law is also concerned that Denmark is under threat. Like Britain’s Elizabeth II, Queen Margrethe wields no political power. But unlike Buckingham Palace, Amalienborg Palace doesn’t baulk at plunging into politics. In her biography published last year, Margrethe told her biographer that “we are being challenged by Islam these years - globally as well as locally. It is a challenge we have to take seriously. We have let this issue float about for too long because we are tolerant and lazy.”
"We have to show our opposition to Islam and we have to, at times, run the risk of having unflattering labels placed on us because there are some things for which we should display no tolerance. And when we are tolerant, we must know whether it is because of convenience or conviction."
But as evidence emerges that Denmark’s extremist imams may have gingered up the offending cartoons, adding in a few from elsewhere – the internet, or even perhaps of their own hand – while imploring the Sauds, the custodians of Islam’s holy places, to condemn Copenhangen a full four months after the event, many Danes conspiritorially feel that they have been ambushed, that they are victims of an elaborate stitch-up, payback time for joining the American war in Iraq. The sad – and increasingly murderous - irony of the cartoon controversy is that their most welcoming, liberal and inoffensive of nations is now being pilloried because of those very values.
Perhaps there’s hope yet for culturally-challenged Denmark. In the catacombs of Hamlet’s Kronborg Castle at Elsinore, where Shakespeare placed one of his best-read tragedies, sits a stone statue of Holger Danske. He’s a medieval Danish hero based on a fearless mercenary who fought for the court of Charlemagne, the Franco-Roman emperor often cited as the founder-defender of Christian Europe. Europe secured and his work done, a Holger homesick for his lovely land left Charlemagne’s ranks and returned to Kronborg where he fell asleep, a stony state he maintains to this day.
But as lore has it, if Denmark’s sovereignty
is ever threatened, Holger will wake to again defend the realm. And as Denmark
is assailed, rightly or wrongly, abroad and at home, more and more Danes swear
they have seen Holger a-stirring to fix, as Shakespeare once described, whatever
it is that’s rotten in the state of Denmark.