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Moderation and a comparatively egalitarian approach are quintessential Danish qualities, all too often thoughtlessly maligned and ridiculed. The fact is, for be
by interfixus 9y ago
Moderation and a comparatively egalitarian approach are quintessential Danish qualities, all too often thoughtlessly maligned and ridiculed.
The fact is, for better or worse, these traits have served us well as a functioning society for the last thousand years, and in my guess, far longer back than that. A few data points:
The last Danish regent or head of government to die violently was king Erik Klipping. The date may resonate with some Americans. It was the 22nd of November. But it was in the year 1286.
We have had no real civil warfare since the late viking age. Some unrest leading up to the reformation ("Count's Feud") was actually a war against North Germans. The reformation itself was settled fairly amicably. No real bloodshed, the monks and nuns were often allowed to stay in their monastries for as long as they lived.
No pitched battles in 1848/49. A delegation went and saw the king. A democratic constitution was announced.
An overwhelming majority of Danish jews escaped unharmed to neutral Sweden in 1943, a thing only possible because of a quiet but widespread support in the general population.
Really, we haven't done too badly. But it's not a societal model particularly well geared towards the present day influx of large numbers of people with quite different and often more muscular attitudes to everyday interictions.
- FelixGommen 9y agoWell I think the schleswig-holsteiners would disagree. They fought two wars before they were allowed to decide for themselves:-)
- jernfrost 9y agoIt is about scale. My country Norway was under Danish rule for 400 years, yet it was never anything like the oppression and brutality the Scottish and Irish experienced at the hands of the English. It is why despite Scandinavian having fought numerous wars agains each other, there is not much bad blood. None of the wars were really that terrible. Telling was how Sweden and Norway fought when Norway declared independece in 1905. It did not last long because the Swedish king did not want to make Norwegians hate Swedes. Not the kind of thing that would ever have concerned and english king or people like Bismarch.
- interfixus 9y agoThere were complex aspects about both those wars. But they were indisputably fought between Danes and Germans. Schleswig-Holstein was a German duchy under the Danish king, not a paart of Denmark proper. The second war, in 1864, ended with a huge loss of Danish territory to the emerging German superstate. The northern half of this territory was returned to Denmark in 1920, with the southern remaining German. This was the result of a referendum in the wake of World War 1. Everything was orderly and civilized, and the border region to this day remains a model of how to handle such things without undue upheaval - thus exactly confirming my point above.
- FelixGommen 9y agoWell - that is how things evolved - but in the early 800, when the ejderen border was created no one thought of themselves as german.
- interfixus 9y agoProbably not. Although I am getting ever more suspicious about the latter day dogma about the nation as a purely modern invention. Denmark was well enough defined and understood a thousand years ago.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]