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Vice Blog

SCANDINAVIA - THE END OF DENMARK

Dan Charly Christensen, aka DC, lives in the Danish countryside. He doesn't go to the store to buy anything but wine, since he grows his own vegetables and keeps cows in a field close to the house. DC has published some heavy books on education, important things that happened back in time, modernity, and World War II, and H.C. Ørsted, and was beat up by a theologian, which turned him on to history. People love to hear him talk about it, especially students at Roskilde University Center. It doesn't hurt that he looks like Robert Redford--all the kids have a crush on him.

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Vice: When did you become interested in history?

DC:

We had an amazing history teacher in the boy school I went to. He did a lot of research and was very passionate about history. I remember once after an exam, he jumped up, stared us down and shouted, "Listen up boys, The Reformation in Denmark [1536] – was it good or was it bad?" We had all read these texts about how The Reformation was the best thing that ever happened to Denmark, because it got rid of smelly old monasteries and the Roman Catholic hypocrisy. Mass and psalms were in Danish from this point on – it was all progress. We told him that, and he hit the table hard with his hand and shouted at the top of his lungs, "No, it was some damn shit!" At that time I didn't understand why he said that and why it was so important for him to demonstrate his feelings about The Reformation – especially since it had nothing to do with the exam we were taking. I spent years trying to figure it out afterwards. He had this wonderful talent of provoking his students. He made us think about whether the truth of history really was progress upon progress upon progress. After all it is always the winners who write history. The Reformation was in fact very brutal and very painful. Millions of people died and institutions of charity were uprooted. He made us challenge history and think about whether things could have been different.

So did you study history from then on?

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No, at first I wanted to be a theologian. I wanted to work in developing countries and I felt that the commercial company I was an apprentice with was doing more harm than good. I figured that a religious organization might be a better option. Unfortunately, I began my education at an Inner Mission boarding school. We were treated so badly that I lost my faith and respect of institutionalized religion. They would beat us and there was a thought police running the place. Once, very boldly, I held a girl's hand walking down the main street in the city and when the headmaster saw it he gave me a severe beating. The girl was really hot and I took her for a walk in the woods, but apart from holding hands nothing happened. The headmaster already hated me. As a chairman of the student council I had invited several radical theologians to come and give lectures. The headmaster couldn't stand it. After he heard of me and the girl he called me to his office yelling, "You are a bastard and a seducer and we would rather see your heel than your toe. Take off your glasses so I can hit you." He had screwed his way to his current position by impregnating the former headmaster's daughter. His reaction was rather hypocritical. This experience, along with a lot of general bigotry, made me despise the church as an institution and look for healthier spiritual food.

Then history is sexier than theology?

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I chose history because it seemed to me to be the compilation of the human experience of life. What interests me is the history of ideas. I want to know how these ideas have influenced our lives. As a human being, existing in the present, history brings relativity to our lives. It makes us understand our existence in a context. I believe that the domineering trait in the conscious of most humans is this: Here and now we have reached the absolute culmination of wisdom. I think history can show us that this is a completely mistaken conclusion.

What do you think about the Danes and their view of their own history?

I must admit that I am quite pessimistic. It seems that reflections on our own history are rare. We have become a country more and more void of history. I suppose the little consciousness there is left comes down to the fact that all Danes know, deep within themselves, that Denmark has never played a big part in the history of the world. We have lost almost all our wars. If there is such a thing as a "Danish national mindset" I think it has been influenced a lot by that fact. The United Kingdom, for instance, is a country that has won all their wars. They can look back at World War II, and the sacrifices they made, with a certain amount of pride – at one point they were all alone against Germany. Surely that has done a lot for their historical consciousness, whereas we behaved quite cowardly.

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What do you think was the best moment in Danish history?

Definitely the extensive agricultural reforms, involving the abolition of serfdom, the abolition of the old open-field system, and the amalgamation of many smaller farms into larger ones. It is largely believed that all this came from the common people, but of course it was an interaction between different layers of society. In this period there were several progressive persons in the Danish aristocracy who sincerely believed that progress would only happen if they helped the peasants thrive. That if they gave them the opportunity of free initiative, that would entail a new creativity in our society, which would lift the whole lot. Because of this, we have had a rather peaceful development in Denmark. The capitalist class was simply clever enough to work together with the working classes and I believe that it was in this period that the best traits of the Danes were founded.

Now what about the worst?

The foreign policy conducted by Danish absolutism during the Napoleonic wars was a disaster. Our monarch believed Bonaparte was invincible and sided with France. In hindsight that turned out to be the beginning of the end of the multi-cultural state comprising Denmark, the German duchies, Norway, Iceland, Greenland, and colonies on three continents. The disintegration of this multi-cultural state was very unfortunate. From then on, Denmark just became smaller and smaller and we ended up becoming very homogeneous, ethnically, and I do not believe this is healthy for the mindset of a country. It is a huge limitation in a world where it is very important to have a multi-cultural outlook. We used to speak a lot of languages in Denmark and it forced us to have a big tolerance towards different cultures. Now we have become a provincial, nationalistic, intolerant country. Something that is demonstrated for instance in how we abuse our freedom of speech to mock different religions as in the case of the Muhammad drawings. It is a fucking parody to beat our chests like we're gorillas and yell and scream and brag about our freedom of speech. All it does is make a mockery of those who don't have it. There is nothing heroic about it.

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And which is the biggest lie in Danish history?

To compensate for the inferiority complex Danes have constructed a nationalistic myth of self-complacency. It suggests that we invented everything ourselves. We see ourselves as an isolated island of unique geniuses. Still to this day the Agricultural Council Of Denmark claims that the Danish land reforms were founded solely on domestic ideas. A big illusion.

What can history really teach us?

I believe that a single person can learn something from history, but I do not believe that we can learn much as a people. Is there a built-in progress in history? Do we become more and more civilized? Less and less violent? More and more happy? Well, there is one such thing: Europe has become unified, which rules out war within Europe. That is of course progress. But there are other examples that show that we have learnt very little. The Americans, for instance, didn't learn anything from their defeat in Vietnam, since they keep on throwing themselves into new futile interventions in other developing countries.

Now about the future – will Denmark still exist?

Well, geography is geography, but I believe the national consciousness will limit itself to soccer games and taking part in the Olympics.

ROXANNA ANNE ALBECK