A history essay written in response to a ‘foreign’ university lecturer in anthropology, who purported to study the Jantelov in Denmark – and totally misunderstood it.Let me do a ‘Catch all clauses’ from the start: my knowledge of Anthropology is limited to Margaret Mead (classic), Kate Fox (recent, about the English), Francis Fukuyama (modern thinker on sociology), Hoofstede and Frans Trompenaars (both Dutch culture/sociology gurus). I am not even sure you may call all of them Anthropologists.
Well, as an amateur I can do what I want, right?
OverviewThe 'Jantelov' goes like this:
Don't think that you are special.
Don't think that you are of the same standing as us.
Don't think that you are smarter than us.
Don't fancy yourself as being better than us.
Don't think that you know more than us.
Don't think that you are more important than us.
Don't think that you are good at anything.
Don't laugh at us.
Don't think that anyone of us cares about you.
Don't think that you can teach us anything.
First of all, I personally do not believe the Jantelov is Danish at all. It is a label that happened to be glued onto a general human characteristic by a Danish/ Norwegian author, Axel Sandemose, in his novel "En flygtning krydser sit spor" (A fugitive crosses his tracks) from 1933, when both Denmark and the rest of the world was widely different from today. It was also invented in a thoroughly parochial arena that in my eyes could have been anywhere (almost) in the world – it just happened to be Nykøbing Mors.
If you don't believe me, then read the following, written by the American CEO of Strategic Management Group, Les Spero, to his European counterparts:
You sounded disturbed by not being more deeply involved with this client.
Some comments:
Do not patronize yanks.
We have a far higher standard of living
We clearly have more freedoms
We have lower employment, higher labor force participation rates, greater cultural facilities, a more beautiful country.We know we bailed you guys out twice from world wars, defeated communism. Do not patronize us. We are better than you. More important than that, do not in any way intimate to us that you are better than we.”
Get the point?
It is NOT a Danish characteristic, as most anthropologists would like you to believe.
So why would Danes know about Janteloven and e.g. Dutch people not?
Simply because Sandemose is likely to be on the Danish school curriculum – and it is roughly the only reason Sandemose is remembered today. Just try reading one of his books!!
I discussed my take on the issue with two well-educated Danes last week (age ca 31) – one is a Marketing Manager in a Bank, the other Manager in an Insurance company. None of them remembered Sandemose from School! So perhaps it has changed from my time. I am 66 – and was forced to suffer Sandemose’s utterly boring texts and even wrote an essay on the Jantelov around 1960 (long lost!)
My various postings abroad (Schweiz, UK, Holland and numerous travels elsewhere) have given me both an interest and an experience in Human Behaviour and cultural differences. I have picked this knowledge up – and used it - mainly in my function as a Manager in large companies and later as a Management Development Consultant, but clearly in a practical way and not pretending any academic studies beyond what reading other people’s work could provide (e.g. the authors mentioned above).
If I have to distil the essence of my experience, then I can best express it as “if you behave in a way that is different from the norm of the place where you are, then you are likely to be met with suspicion; the reaction is invariably a level of distrust, even rejection”.
That’s the bottom line.
With more time I could probably find an endless number of examples – most of which wouldn’t be Danish, but here are two:
“Chocolat”, a French film about a woman and her daughter, who open a chocolate shop in a small French village. It totally shakes up the rigid morality of the community. It is the Jante-law to the bone, but I doubt the director ever heard about Jante. A more personal example was my experience from moving to the South-Western part of Holland (Terneuzen) in 1975. I was interviewed by a local newspaper and committed the faux-pas of expressing quite openly what it meant to me and my family being exposed to a parochial Flemish community. Retrospectively, I understand what Sandemose must have felt in a mind-constrained Danish community.
I got a very strong feeling that your discussions with your Danish “informants” (what a wonderful word - sounds like underground IRA ;-), and the answers in particular, were immensely predictable. I tried to emulate two of the ways questions could be formed during an event with 20 people in København, attending a 60-year birthday party. The first was: “Do you feel that the Jante-law is valid and still has a significance in the present day Danish Society”? – followed by: “give me an example or two”. The other was: “Tell me, are we allowed to perform competitively and to achieve success in today’s Denmark?”.
The answers to the first question were interesting: some immediately said that of course the Jantelov was valid. Others said it was an obsolete notion.
The answers to the second question ran along the line, that competition and performance were necessities in today’s global society. None of the incumbents, to my knowledge, heard the question posed to the other group, as I tried to lead the conversation with individuals.
Mentioning the Jante-law, known a priori to all Danes, was a wrong move. It created a focus for the answers and immediately turned their mindset towards its effects. Margaret Meade in a nutshell.
Issues concerning the study of the Jante-law.Battaglia mentions that “experience must have priority”. It makes it extremely difficult for people, who have no intrinsic knowledge of the language, symbols and interpretations, to penetrate the anthropological barriers – ref. Margaret Meade. If you do not speak/ understand Danish – both in terms of the actual translated word and the sometimes totally different cultural/ sociological interpretation – you will remain an external observer. You will never become a participant (which by the way might change the observed event a la quantum mechanics) – and never, ever an Eavesdropper (Kate Fox, 2000), although this is one of the best ways to find out what REALLY goes on. Vital clues may be lost and misunderstandings may occur. I may be wrong, but I have a strange feeling that your ‘Informant’-interaction possessed a degree of “given outcome”, simply because of the way questions were presented – just as I observed in my (admittedly) very unscientific approach.
I do agree that the Jante-law is anything but arbitrary – it is extremely integrated in most western cultures and perhaps others too. But I disagree entirely that it is part of the Danish “cosmological, political welfare-state” – a Danish Sittlichkeit as you mention. Sittlichkeit perhaps, but definitely not a national symbol.
You describe your informants’ various reactions to the Jante-law (irritation, laughing, disregard etc.) and yet no one being able to distance themselves from it. In my opinion, because they all knew about it as mentioned and hence had a pre-determined label to stick on a given behaviour, which in my opinion is universal! In my experience the Jante-law has become a welcome excuse, an easy way of explaining something everyone, everywhere may encounter. It is a Danish word with the same significance as other words in the language, like embarrassed, happy, angry, rainy weather or rich. Everyone knows what it means, while few may remember where it originated. I found the same reaction as you – but drilling people for a deeper answer and examples they all responded that the Jante-law only had significance the very moment I brought it up. It meant absolutely nothing to them otherwise and they never thought about it.
Society, with its rules and mores, was an entirely different affair in a dark province 70 years ago – with no internet and a population that often had not been off the island in a lifetime. Have a look at the map – Nykøbing Mors is not exactly at the centre of events! I knew people like that in the 1960s – my girlfriends grandmother on Langeland for one.
Lex Insita (Bourdieu 1977) should in this context have been something I must have felt - - and yet, when I went to school, the whole system was tuned towards reward for performance. But perhaps I was too thick-skinned? My Danish-teacher in the gymnasium (1960-62) called me a “nosy troublemaker” (“kværulant” in Danish), because I always asked ‘why?’ and tended to disagree with him. I can’t remember why – perhaps I really wanted to dig deeper, perhaps he was an old fool, perhaps I just was a trouble maker?
Children were sent into different educational directions depending on their abilities, the ultimate being Gymnasium and becoming a student. Grades were, of course, given along the way, determining your future – at least to a degree - not like today, where an ability to kick a leather ball full of hot air between to sticks by far outperforms a mere academic career, at least in terms of income.
It may, however, be true that the tendency of the advanced welfare state to make everything the same has created a more substantial flower-bed for a pseudo Jante-law growth! Everyone needs a chance and no one should have more than others, ref. the tax-system with 70% marginal and Denmark’s stupid obsession with trying to solve the problem of the 4 Billion poor in the world. In the school system the effect has become boredom for the clever and inability to cope for the rest. Result: no one can spell, read or write properly today. But this is NOT the Jante-law effect. This represents a misunderstood social-missionary attitude that boomerangs violently on Danish society.
However, I do NOT believe this effect was caused by an inherent ‘Danish’ psyche.
In the 1960s and 70s the media were red as tomatoes. Social-Democrats were in majority They were constantly chased to their feet by radical leftist parties (Venstre-Socialisterne, Socialistisk Folkeparti and a still extant Communist party). This was a major departure from the past. The demand was a cry a la 1789/ 1918 for equal opportunity for all. School reforms flattened the performance-criteria and called for everyone to have an opportunity, rather than an ability, to become tops in society. In my graduation year, 1962, as a student there were 7,000 students. In 1990 there were 50,000. I will eat my old hat, if the system is not turning back to strict performance criteria and even numerus clauses one day. Corduroys and big sweaters were de-rigueur in 1960s – I only started wearing a tie when I moved to Holland in ‘Big Business’. But ties and suits are back in DK business today – and so is 4x4s, expensive restaurants, villas along the coast, etc. It seems to me that class and wealth is marching ahead faster than equality, only held back by anachronisms such as 70% marginal tax.
A very high % of the work-capable population is held in passive coma through the social welfare system – many more working in non-producing service jobs. Probably only 20-25% of the population earns a living for everyone else.
That’s scary and it could become the downfall of the welfare state as Francis Fukuyama predicts
Your account of a midwife, who returned to Denmark from New Zeeland and Canada, experiencing ‘small shoes’ is nothing to do with the Jante-law in my opinion. It is in the first place an effect of what we see overall in Western Europe. Hospitals have become cost-centres and there is an enormous focus on performance. In England hospitals are closing at the same rate as in Denmark, inefficiency is rampant and our ability to do the most complex operations is forcing a very unpleasant choice: must we repair the hip on the 74-year old woman before treating an ulcer in a 27 old man? Who goes first? How long can any of them wait? Will someone constantly get in the way for either of them due to pressing priorities and growing capabilities, e.g. plastic surgery for the rich?
In the second place, the world’s economy has changed dramatically. My house cost £100 in the 50s and was scheduled for demolition. Now it is worth £650K. This effect has penetrated everything around us – from salaries and their demographic distribution to the type of work we do – from an industry society to a service society, where everyone serves and no one produces. Nurses, policemen, teachers and firemen can’t afford living accommodation in London or København – yet they are the pillars of a civilized society.
What your midwife is complaining about is the effect of all this, the stretching and stressing of society-economics and demographics, and certainly not the Jante-law.
Your informant, who feels he cannot read in the bus without feeling that he is better than everyone else, must have a personality problem. I remember learning Greek in the train (1970). Many long distance trains have bridge clubs or language courses – just like in England, and a couple of days ago I saw plenty of people reading and (perhaps more importantly) many young people who certainly had no fear of looking different. I didn’t ask if they knew the Jante-law and this is what young people do anyway. The people at my party confirmed that the sameness/ Jante-law notion was “rubbish” (sorry – these were their words).
Your “Showing off the house” example? We visited some remote friends last year, whom we hadn’t seen for ages – and they actually asked if we wanted to see their house! I also remember that this was something we did 30 years ago as a standard expression of politeness if people showed interest. Again, it is quite a normal thing to do in Denmark. There are even TV-series that focus on ‘house-crawls’. I have pondered the reason – perhaps it is because Denmark has a high proportion of individually designed homes. It is not like in England, where whole streets – even cities – are copies of the same “two down/ two up”. It would be unthinkable to have a walk-about in an English home for other reasons than finding the loo, as every house is the same, something that for ages has made me giggle about the oxymoron “an English Architect”. Not a bad word about Norman Foster or Lutyens – but privately designed homes in England are by and large a non-extant subject. Not so in Denmark – hence everyone’s desire to see “the other people’s home”. Again nothing to do with Jante and not at all a show-off.
Now your Katja, who felt she couldn’t tell people she had been travelling? Everyone in Denmark, in particular if you are below 35, travels. My Mother was an Au Pair in Bristol in 1921. She lived 10 years in Paris in the 1930s and only returned because of the war. My Father lived in a suitcase and worked in South Africa, Estonia and Latvia in the 1920s till late 1940s. Everyone in my fairly large circle of friends has travelled extensively – from short stays to emigration – and most have returned enriched in culture and global understanding. I can guarantee you that none of them has felt the slightest animosity – on the contrary. Danes find it exciting and are probably only surpassed in their quest for travel and for foreign impressions by the Dutch.
No Jante-law here.
You mention the Danish lack of a ‘killer instinct’, e.g. in soccer. Try to turn it around. You don’t need the killer instinct to be great in sport. Hans, the worker from the Metro who supported your notion, must have a memory failure; Denmark won the European cup in 1992, beating England, Holland and (oh happiness!!) Germany. We have World masters in Badminton and Kayak and Danish footballers constantly get sold off to European clubs, making Danes proud (and a little irritated, as we can’t keep them home to boost our image!). Jante-law? Quite the opposite. You could even say that the once famous English fair play still exists in Denmark. But what do you expect from 5 mill inhabitants? Nothing to do with a killer instinct, but perhaps a lack of choice in a small population! You are probably quite right when you analyse why hooliganism exists in particular in this sport – so my explanation is that Denmark is such a small country that to have a large group of really eccentric (violent, hyper-religious, etc.) people is close to a physical impossibility. At the same time, Denmark has always been quite “orderly” and it would be wrong – and dangerous – to begin gluing the Jante-label on what you might call proper behaviour in a society that by and large respects decent relationships – that is, until we experienced the untimely influx of people with very different habits, religion and paradigms, who use rather than produce. But that’s another discussion.
Sabine’s examples of ‘Du’(tu) and ‘De’(Vous) is quite correct – an example of symbols that may be used for certain purposes e.g. to distance yourself from the person you speak to, showing a level of superiority. I use it sometimes when I want to eliminate someone coming down on me, e.g. the attendant in the Danish Visa office in London, whose power implicitly is greater than mine. It is in my opinion nothing to do with the Jantelov; but today no one would bat en eyelid if you consistently used ‘Du’.
I don’t quite understand the issue you mention about people feeling shy about Lars von Trier, the film instructor. My impression is that people are quite proud of a Danish person’s international performance – football (Smeichel) or films. If Lars von Trier has a problem it is probably more to do with the tax-authorities than anything else. They are robbers by daylight and he wouldn’t be the first Dane to move to a tax haven.
The issue around immigrants, presented in “Jyllandposten” and “Information” is probably too big for this write-up. I would have a lot to say – but perhaps I can refer you to Francis Fukuyama’s latest books, recently mentioned in “Jyllandsposten”. I find him intelligent, well argued and certainly not a post modern, evangelical neo-conservative Bush fan. His key gripes are; a) Yes the Muslim issue is dangerous (with or without Bush) and b) the welfare states are out of their minds allowing the Muslim progress to eat into hard won freedoms and tolerances.
It speaks volumes for the Danish way of thinking: freedom of expression, ability to self-criticism, constantly trying new boundaries, a searching and argumentative climate – again a non-jante-law characteristic!. Jyllandsposten asked a group of artists to draw their impression of Islam, when an author complained he could find no one willing. No one in their wildest nightmares had foreseen the consequences, stirred up several months later by Imams with a religious/political agenda – and the Danes ought to be proud of this innocent attitude. A later article in “Politiken” argued for the right to reprint them. Giving in to threats and terror that belong in the 7th century is not Danish. The opinion amongst my friends was that the few million Danish Kroner lost by ARLA in global sales was nothing compared to the loss of work and freedom of the cartoonists and their families. THAT is probably a very Danish attitude and I agree wholeheartedly. By the way – many international newspapers have since reproduced the cartoons.
The understanding of the immigrant-problem is difficult to explain in a few short sentences. A few clues, though: if 20% of the working population has to keep 80% service workers and a stream of economic immigrants alive, the strain will become unsustainable, exacerbated by an aging population. If the immigrants are seen to get preferential treatment above native Danes in terms of e.g. available housing (a HUGE problem in most places, but mostly in Kobenhavn), tempers are bound to flare. If immigrants use the business start-up support available to open and close shops to the tune of €10,000 every time in support, almost cyclically, then it will create anger. Denmark had no commitment to the world, like colonial nations, other than as a responsible state with a genuine socialist attitude of help-thy-neighbour; but wishy-washy governments that had only one objective (staying in power) and off-the-rail leftist do-good’ers opened the flood gates with no plan for integration – all within a mere 25 years from 1980.
Consider 12,000 Somalis, un-integrated and speaking no Danish after 10 years in a city with perhaps 150,000 citizens. It takes no rocket science to find out that these people want to live above the support level, seeing an affluent society around them. So many of them become the now well-established core of the criminal drugs trade.
Another example: My wife is Ukrainian. She is highly educated and has residence permit in the UK as a ‘spouse of a Eur. Citizen’ – until she gets a UK passport. We have gone through years of visas and difficulties to get this far, but I accept this as a reasonable way to control what is going on in the world’s mobile population. If she wants to go to Denmark, however, she needs a DK or Schengen visa, an invitation and preferably a travel route, just to visit. In the worst case she would have to live in DK for 13 years, living with me, to get citizenship. It could be brought down to 3, if she spoke fluent Danish, had a senior job etc., almost impossible demands in the time frame, and she would be deported to Ukraina if I died before the 3 or 13 years had expired. Travelling in DK (Tirstrup, Aarhus) I saw a family of 8 Somalis aged 6-30s. I walked over and talked to them in Danish. They didn’t understand. But they DID have Danish passports!
What feelings do you think I had comparing this with my wife?
If you now add an established tradition of equal opportunity for all, a successful feminist movement in the 70s/80s, animal welfare above halal meat in schools, focus on humanity, and a hard won right to freedom of expression, don’t you then think there is a much deeper reason for the animosity towards immigrants, as you describe when referring to Jyllandsposten and Information’s articles about “dangerous” immigrants, than the mere reference to the ethos of the Jante-law?
I think the Cartoons said everything about Danish freedom of speech and humour than many articles. No one is sacrosanct in Denmark. Holberg and Moliere first, and later many 19th and 20th C authors you would probably never have heard about, taught us to laugh at ourselves.
Danes have often been quite radical, sometimes unwittingly and definitely anti-Jante-laws.
If your studies led you around Victor Hørup, Georg Brandes and Gustav Wied you will understand.
But the animosity towards immigrants is not a Danish feature. It is universal. Monrad, the designer of the 1849-constitution was expelled from the country after the 1864 debacle with Germany. He created a small colony in New Zeeland called Dannevirke and quickly experienced the hate towards foreigners. Even then and there.
It is just “what we humans do to others” - everywhere. Sometimes there are very strong and identifiable reasons. Sometimes it is the intrinsic tribal gene in our DNA.
In Denmark today I think the strain arises as described above – in a population that is almost a family – only 5.5 million, half of Greater London.
Now Homo Aequalis. When the Vikings started their outward bound adventures 1200 years ago, the reason could definitely be explained by “Foster’s Limited Resources theory”. Farms were inherited by the oldest son and there was too little land to go around. The big empty Europe was too good to be true, particularly England after the departure of the Romans. Contrary to standard belief, many of the Viking settlers in England lived quite peacefully side by side with the locals – they even understood each other, as many of the Angles would have come from Denmark 2-300 years before.
Very little of the culture of the sagas, however, was left in the mind of the remaining Danish population as the century passed. Denmark was ruled by king and nobles in fluctuating relationships. Where King John had to sign Magna Carta in 1215 in England, the Danish king – in fact Queen Margaret I – took total control in the 15th C and demolished both the power and the 100s of fiefdom castles protecting the self-assumed rights of the majority of the Danish noble class, so much so that their moats and ruins are more frequent in Denmark than the splendid castles and forts of Germany and England. Her reorganisation of the assets in Denmark was perhaps the most significant turning point in Danish society. From her control after the Nordic Union, where she “sat” on Denmark, Norway and Sweden, and until 1658 Denmark remained a significant power in Northern Europe with a clear stratification of classes. The farmers had become serfs with no influence on ‘society’. For approximately 400 years (1300-1700) Scandinavia (Norway, Sweden, Denmark) experienced a uniform culture, uniform trading, uniform language, despite regular skirmishes with the Swedes.
Denmark was still a power to reckon with despite the loss in 1658 of Skaane, Halland and Blekinge, which today remains the only arable land in Sweden. In the wars with Sweden and Karl XII, who even ravaged Europe way into Russia and present Ukraina, where he was defeated at Poltava, Denmark lost the right arm. Norway was only lost after the war with England 1801-1814 (Denmark was a Napoleonic ally), but until 1807 Denmark had the largest navy in Europe, then destroyed by Nelson. In the 17-1800s Denmark was also a colonial power (Ghana, Virgin Islands, Tranquebar, Greenland, Iceland, Faroe Islands) and had since the 1300s possessed the lands of the ‘Duchies’, including Schleswig, Holstein and Mecklenburg (where incidentally my family held massive possessions in the 1400s). The southern Danish border stopped at Altona on the Elbe river, just across from Hamburg. The Duchies were secured in one of the many wars with Germany in 1848, following which Denmark got its (still valid) constitution, 1849. However, in the 1864 war all was lost and the agony was immense. The national movements woke up, seriously, during these critical years of 1800-1840. The king (Frederik VII) was a father figure, even married to a ‘citoyenne’! Losing the Duchies in 1864 was therefore the final blow to a shrinking Denmark. Some land was recovered in 1920 at the plebiscite, but incompetent politicians let majority Danish land go.
It was the effect of “Big cats” at play – not the Jante-law!
As an aside – the Danish Foreign Minister Hækkerup lost probably 70% of the ‘reasonably’ allocated North Sea oil area due to over-consumption of the contents of a now herostratically famous whisky bottle. I doubt he had Jante in mind -
So, why do I describe all this?
Because “the smaa sko” (small shoes/ petits chaussures) syndrome, you mention, is a false label if it is supposed to reflect something Danish. It is a universal label for parochial humanity. Denmark never had a snowball’s chance in hell when the big powers started to play. In fact, it is an enigma to me how Denmark managed to stay high in the ranks of European ‘powers’ for so long. Everyone seems to forget that Denmark never exceeded 10% of the population of e.g. England and France, yet for centuries we managed to play a major role.
Having said that, there is no doubt that the constant decline of the state in the 1650s and later after 1814 (the loss of Norway, the left arm) must have produced bitter feelings, probably not with the farmers and fishermen, who had enough around their ears to stay alive, but with the city-merchants, the politicians and the powerful noble class.
It was not, as you describe, well-off farmers who took over land as such at the end of the 18th C. They had no power, and perhaps no energy, to begin such an enterprise. It was upper class nobles, land-owners such as Reventlow, Bernstorff and Colbjørnsen, who, under the impression of something as banal as increasing corn-prices in the 1760s, began a change process that just happened to be helped on the way by the European spiritual influences in the 1770s. A keen commercial opportunity thus worked hand in hand with an increased focus on humanitarian values, e.g. the American declaration of 1776. This feeling got a strong outlet in the early banishment of slavery and the view that simple farmers were humans too. It also made good economical sense. Until then the noble class could demand anything from their farmers – and they did. From the “first night with the bride” to severe physical punishment and unreasonable taxes. From 1400 till 1800 Østergaard is right: Denmark could be described with the translation of a famous saying: “French with his wife, German with his servant, Danish with his dog he spoke” – very international in the upper echelons of society, where decisions were made, very plebs and ‘Danish’ (?) lower down.
A late import was, for example, Graf (le Duc) Struensee, who managed to impregnate the wife of the insane Christian VII, Caroline Mathilde. He almost managed to take total control of the state in the 1770s – before his head found a lasting resting place different from the rest of his broken body. The royal family was German and the nobles were traditionally German (mainly), French and Italian import. A rich merchant class had its eyes on the world, enjoying a strategic position at the entry to the Baltic Sea.
The farmers and fishermen? Forget them. They just spoke Danish.
The Danish ‘lower classes’ were only introduced to real life after 1800 – expressed and promoted as an ideal in the literature of the golden age by Oehlenschlager, Hans Christian Andersen, Hertz, Baggesen and many other writers, inspired internationally by Jean Jacques Rousseau, the American declaration of Human Rights and the French revolution. By 1849 Danish nationality was well developed and the next 75 years experienced the foundation of a modern, civilized, caring state: “where few have too much and fewer too little”, from the 1930s.
Denmark can truly lay claim to being the world’s first welfare state – not built on envy and sameness, but with a tradition coming from the loss of a great past, literature of world class (in its time) and great thinkers in the 130 years from 1770 to 1900.
The impact was massive – quickly felt on a population hardly exceeding 2 million, speaking a language few other understood. Not a mean feat, quite frankly.
Lacking a killer instinct?
A quest for sameness?
I beg to differ.
The song you mention (Grundtvig’s “langt højere bjerge”), is a starter signal to the Danish national movement in 1820. If we really lost so much, why not be happy with what we have gained? Freedom, ability to live worth-while lives, accepting that a small population has no chance of creating a colonial empire like England’s and France’s. “Hvad udadtil tabes må indadtil vindes” - what we lose externally we must compensate for inwardly. Perhaps this was history’s lesson and a signal to Denmark. If you look at the country today, you will find Denmark top-rated in terms of living standard, lack of corruption and general welfare - - well, you name it. Perhaps we were lucky to lose our colonies and the trouble that went with them?
But did we really win it internally?
The society that has emerged is a consequence of massive immigration by totally irrelevant peoples, to whom we never had a commitment. It has become both a threat and an opportunity.
The negative reaction is not a consequence of the Jante-law – it follows from a more basic feeling of being threatened on hard won values: No “suppressed” women, respect for the individual, tolerance, an equitable view of humanity, security for all – under responsibility. When Danes see Imams, who produce nothing but children and who live on benefits paid by the rest of the population, demanding foreign powers to punish the Danish prime Minister on an issue that took 200 years to achieve (freedom of religious belief; freedom of speech) – then tempers flare. But they flare the Danish way: loud speaking and democratic protest in action. No revolution, rather satire and political discussion.
I would dare the statement that Denmark has overcome its lost grandeur considerably better and more elegantly than the English, where slowly the notion of the “multicultural society” is recognised as a misnomer, driving people into the arms of a highly fascist party, the BNP. In my opinion it is to do with the Danes being more level-headed and realistic. This was created by authors, artists and painters in the 19th Century. Because Denmark is so small – hence homogeneous – common feelings, statements and mental seeds were much easier to sow.
They still are.
Consider the Brenderup Trailer. Everyone has one – try to find a different brand!.
Nike trainers? Everyone has a pair.
The rucksack “Fjællræven Kånken”? If you have a rucksack, that’s the brand for everyone.
Compared to business, culture and marketing in the ‘city’ of England, Denmark is just one street long. Someone at the end begins to put green peppercorns in his traditional strawberry desert – and everyone in the street will use green peppercorns.
In England they fight to “keep up with the Jones’es”.
In Denmark it comes naturally, as Jones (Jensen) is your neighbour two houses down.
It is not a trend to gain sameness – it is viral communication. You experience it immediately when someone has it. It becomes a “want” above equalisation, simply because it is there and you are told about it. Compare with the explosion in utterly un-necessary functions of mobile phones today (worth a separate study).
When Denmark said NO to Schengen/ Maastricht/ Euro it followed as hand in glove from the above. Denmark is easily overrun by the “Big Guys” – in particular Germany. Example: imagine Germans (or just Hamburg) being allowed to buy Danish property (one of the EU/ Maastricht Benefits) – there would be nothing left for the local population. No summer houses, no villas, nothing. It would take less than 2 years. The Danes love the money Germans bring in during the summer months, but they hate watching the sand castles and fences they put up with signs of ‘My Property’. Their back in the autumn is as nice a sight as their nose in the spring. I have a feeling that a fairly recent law, free access to the beach in a 10m distance from the sea for everyone, was intended as a future protection against Germans.
Make no mistake – Denmark was always very close to Germany. Danish partisans didn’t wake up before mid 1943 and more so when the Germans deported the entire police force in September 1944. There was a huge Scandinavian SS-force (called Viking) and the Danish Civil Engineering Industry flourished in the 1930s and up through 1944, building U-boat bases (St. Nazaire) and bridges (Croatia) for the Germans.
The German scare was an undefined historic under-current before that and it has only become re-emphasised after the war, now economically more than nationally, when the Germans became an danger to our culture and material ownership!
You mention ‘small minded Danish opposition’ to the Bridge between Denmark and Malmø. There is a long standing semi-friendly mental stand-off between Danes and Sweden. Probably going all the way back to the loss of Skåne in 1658, the undecided Nordic war in 1708 and the fact that Sweden assumed a governing position over Norway 1814 to 1905. Skåne was a very Danish piece of property and only became Swedish through forced measures (read: deportation and terror). The flag of Skåne today is red with a yellow cross – telling a little story when you compare the Swedish and the Danish flags. When I was young we all travelled to Sweden to buy cheap – and available! – goods. It was after the war. But during the last 30 years the Swedes totally bungled their position as the world’s nr. 1 rich state and Denmark has become an Eldorado for the Swedes with their alcohol restrictions at home, minimal arable land (no bread, cheese, meat – and most importantly: beer). I grew up in Helsingør. Even when I was a kid we said: “Keep the city clean, carry a Swede to the ferry”. In the streets you find Swedish spoken as much as Danish. The bridge was no doubt a huge benefit to cross-Scandinavian transport, but it had to be built with an agreed financial sharing. The rationale for Danes was never clear, but the Swedes pressed on – and now it’s there. It was hardly used in the beginning and I am not sure it has yet become an economic success, neither in time saved nor in toll profit.
Remember the Chunnel (Tunnel sous la Manche)? It has taken 15 years for the UK-France connection to show its benefits and to demonstrate that the effect goes well beyond a mere ROI (Return on Investment) – which is still a dream of the future. My guess is we will see the same with the DK-S connection. The Danish objections, therefore, were more to do with the enormous costs. THAT’s something people understand. In the meantime the narrow strait between Helsingør and Hælsingborg (only 3 Km) remains one of the most heavily trafficked waters in the world.
You have a problem with the statement: Danes consider their tolerant, rich, secular and democratic nation as a result of the effort by “men and women working hard together”. I agree that it sounds too ‘sweet’. It is always individuals who start change. The arts and enlightened leaders got it moving. The viral effect, as explained above. Once it got going, Denmark was small enough to catch fire and a rich tradition for an argumentative democracy quickly established deep roots, stretching back to 1820.
Our focus on respect and consideration is rather unique in the world – one of the reasons that a foreign threat to these values is taken very seriously.
Whether Danes consider themselves different from the rest of Europe or not is an entirely trivial matter. Everyone, everywhere in my experience, consider themselves different – Dutch, German, English or French. I have heard that statement, constantly, everywhere. But Danish society has slowly become competitive and more international. If young Danes travel abroad I doubt they do it just because life ‘out there is less predictable’. It is an eye-opener for any young, well-educated (i.e. thinking) European to see the conditions under which other people live. More importantly, young people can afford such travel today and it helps generate tolerance, develop personality and establish a personal outlook that may help create change and keep the Danish society young and vibrant. Ask any Head-Hunter today: being international is “it”.
Less affluent countries will feel the pain as they stay parochial and the new-rich Russia will wake up to massive conflicts and social division.
Greenland is a special chapter.
Critical comments about Danish behaviour must no doubt be accepted. No doubt the Danes have sucked Greenland’s resources as much as they could in the past, but endless resources have been pumped into the Greenland society in the last 30 years. Again, don’t forget size; Greenland has perhaps 55,000 inhabitants and is being supported any way thinkable in their attempt to create an (almost) autonomous state. It is unfortunate that this requires a critical size and I am afraid they are below the threshold. However, Denmark has won a deep understanding of the Inuit society sadly lacking in the rest of the world. Just look at English animal protesters who spray seal-furs on London’s streets with paint, ignorant of the attempts of the Inuit people to live sustainable lives in balance with nature. Or Brigitte Bardot, who started it. Or Bing Crossby’s protests against Danish salmon fishing, only resulting in the Russians buying the Danish trawlers, continuing where the Danes were pressurised to let go.
The Inuit in Greenland now have almost complete control over the island, but predictably, and despite massive support, they continue to struggle as tradition and small size make it almost impossible to move forward. Even the Iceland el-dorado: 250,000 people becoming momentarily some of the richest in Europe has failed. Your Journalist informant, who just lashes out and criticises Denmark, clearly speaks through his elbow (nice expression instead of what I really want to say).
The concept of a “wife from Thailand” also exists everywhere, not only in Denmark. We have become global in many ways. It is not necessarily weak men who turn to this resource (although I am aware of a couple). No rule without exception and again I find it irrelevant to elaborate here. “A wife from Denmark” is the reverse syndrome – when a Turk, a Greek, an Arab or a Nigerian picks up a Scandinavian wife for a whole raft of reasons – one being the holiday temptation from both sides, another that “Danish women are considered ”easy” because they are more ‘free’, something highly restrictive, gender-confrontational cultures in many parts of the world don’t even begin to understand. The antipathy towards immigrants often latch on to this effect, for three reasons, a) “they take our women”, b) culture clashes and c) a lack of respect miles off our gentle culture.
This sometimes results in gang-rape perpetrated by Muslim boys, who consider it a show of masculinity in a society populated by “sluts”. Well, we call it a tolerant dress-code!
I must admit that I shake my head when I read about your example of a man returning with many ‘trophies’ from the Amazonas, experiencing a negative and miffed reaction from a neighbour. Danes are used to travel, Everyone finds it exciting if this results in a story to tell. Thor Heyrdahl (Norwegian/ Kon Tiki) is a good example; Tage Nissen, the Danish explorer in South America, is another. I knew his wife personally – a well respected and hugely interesting woman, who always gathered a crowd when we met.
I shall refrain from many more comments about the focus on the Muslim culture, but if it makes me Danish, I agree that either they must integrate, in a supported way, or stay away. We do not intend to give up the fruit of our struggle, a secular and safe state. Unfortunately a democratic Muslim is an oxymoron, although one Danish/Muslim politician has tried to form a democratic Muslim party. According to the Quran, state and religion are inextricably glued together and Muslim land must forever stay Muslim. I cannot see that the 700 faith schools in England produce anything but maladjusted youngsters with as little tolerance and understanding about the depths and wonders of this world as the creationist, evangelical Americans promoted by Mel Gibson and Bush. Denmark has no tradition in this direction and has no need for being part of new religious wars, promoted by an imported anachronistic element. Every other religion enjoys complete freedom in Denmark and as long as it remains a private matter, I find it perfect. What really upsets me is the eternal demand that we “must respect them”, while the opposite is not the case. Try to behave out of the norm in Saudi Arabia and you will understand what I mean. Danes will never understand – and not want to understand – the huge gender difference promoted by Muslims. The fight for equality was too long and too successful – albeit not yet entirely won. So, why extend the tolerance to something that is abhorrent in our eyes instead of doing what the French just did: Keep religious symbols at home and – above all - private.
As to the feeling about being an immigrant? Even after 26 years in England I meet an attitude of “go home if you are not happy”, particularly at heated discussions – or “How often do you go home?” to which I always answer: “ Every evening”. My Ukrainian wife also feels that it is heavy going to become accepted – and it was something I felt in Holland. It is an international, human condition, not just a Danish one.
Intrinsically I am probably 100% Danish, whatever that means. I still laugh at the English class society (Lord this, Lady that) – how uninteresting. And boarding schools: Get a life, you English people and bring up your children in the protection of the home. Perhaps we would se fewer maladjusted youngsters in the streets if that were the case!
My basic attitude remains: if you are a guest, you don’t try to change the host overnight. If you don’t like the smell of bread, get out of the bakery. Lasting change will only take a firm hold if we respect each other and work within the host-parameters. Democracy with all its weaknesses is probably still the only viable form of decent governance. The only way we can help the poor third world to get a better life is local help, not by importing their peoples to our turf and not pressing our systems upon them.
We have a lot of adjustment to do in the next 100 years, including spreading the knowledge about not destroying our earth and how to share knowledge and resources. I honestly believe that an objective observation of the Danes would concur that Denmark has led the way in both society, ecology and adaptation to a modern world.
If the Jantelov had been a firmly embedded national Danish phenomenon, this would never have happened.
