The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia

by Michael Booth

You had the loss to Sweden in 1658, and the bombardment by the British in 1807, and the loss of Norway in 1814, but at that time the people in Jutland didn’t know what people in Zealand thought about any of this. Of course the bombardment affected the bourgeoisie and the military, but they were centred on Copenhagen; and the loss of Norway was felt more in Aalborg, which had been Denmark’s second city, was very wealthy, and lost about 75 per cent of its trade. But still it was only really a very small group of people who had any opinion. The development of a Danish national consciousness really started from the constitution in 1849, so it is from here that you can first talk about ‘the Danes’ in any cohesive sense, really. Soon afterwards there was this disastrous war in Schleswig and that really created a common ground for all Danes. The party that lost that war set out to explain that we were all the better for being so small, and the Social Democratic Party continued this world view. Elsewhere, Social Democracy was firmly based on progress, industry, modernity, but in Denmark it was about the koloni have [those cosy allotment zones].