Literally dancing out Christmas, some Swedish communities are celebrating Knut’s Day (previously) as the end of the holiday season by “plundering” the tree of its ornaments and ceremoniously tossing it out on this twentieth day (imagine that carol) of Yule—Tjugondag jul—set aside as Knut’s name day (see also).
Archival research and interviews with other members of the Danish royal family has enabled a team at Denmark’s public broadcasting service to create a composite, three-dimensional image of King Frederik IX (*1899 – †1972), bearing his torso to show off his tattoos and to tell the authoritative lore (legends of course abound) behind his affection for body art.
Reigning during a time of rapid and sweeping societal change and with the reputation as a monarch of the people and quite personable, Frederik would have probably appreciated the attention paid to his ink and those Johnny Weissmรผller leopard-print trunks aren’t not just a bit of creative license on the part of the modellers but based on an actual article of apparel from the king’s wardrobe.
According to tradition martyred on this day during the Diocletian persecutions of the third century, the solemnity of the Feast of Saint Lucy of the Greek colony of Syracuse in Sicily was somehow translated from her native Italy to darkened, northern climes to become a major Advent celebration in Scandinavian lands.
She is depicted wearing a crown of candles so as to free her arms up to carry as many provisions as she could to fellow Christians hiding in the city’s catacombs to hold mass in secret and evade capture and punishment to navigate the passages and locate her community. Until calendar reforms that didn’t take effect in Nordic countries until the 1800s, Saint Lucy’s Day fell on the Winter Solstice, the shortest day and longest night of the year—to which she brings light and traditionally marked the beginning of Yuletide. Festivities include choosing a local representative for Saint Lucy and an early morning, pre-dawn procession of children—it being also customary to barge into one’s parents’ bedrooms, even the visiting Nobel laureates still in town since the honours usually fall around the same time being treated to the special intercession, and being served a breakfast of Lussekat, baked buns flavoured with saffron. The day is bookended also with Lucy’s counterpart, Lussi the Witch taking flight and bringing general mischief and possibly misfortune for those who didn’t finish holiday preparations and obligations in a timely manner (see also here and here) from Lussinatta until Christmas.
Passed into law by the Folketing on 7 June of that year, legal recognition for same-sex domestic partnerships came into force in the Kingdom of Denmark on this day in 1989. The first legislation of its kind, registered couples were accorded almost equal rights and responsibilities as opposite sex married couples with the proviso that one member either be a Danish citizen or that both parties be in residence for at least two years. The definition of a resident was expanded extraterritorially for the purposes of the law to cover Norway, Iceland and Finland, extending the jurisdiction as far as they could. On 15 June 2012, the partnership law was repealed and replaced by a gender-neutral Marriage Act (รgteskabsloven).
Built in the mid-1960s and finally demolished in 2012, this long resident hall in the capital Nuuk was constructed under the direction of the Folketinget’s programme to moderise its autonomous overseas territory by enticing people to move from coastal settlements, once housing one percent of the population of the world’s largest island—recalling this compound in Alaska.
Made to continental standards, however, the apartments began to prove unpopular with their occupants, finding doors and passageways too narrow for residents coming in wearing full winter gear, absent other storage space, fishing gear crowded balconies and fire-escapes and there was often problems with the plumbing, bath tubs being the only practical place to carve up their catch. One face of the building was emblazoned with the Greenlandic flag, made of discarded pieces of apparel stitched together by a local artist and photographer called Julie Edel Hardenberg with the help of school children. The last tenants were rehoused in estates elsewhere in the Qinngorput district by the airport.
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Though not a wholly original idea as most of the nihilistic non-policies of this government-by-disaster of the Trump regime are, via Boing Boing, reportedly the failed real estate magnate is interested in acquiring Greenland to exploit it for its natural resources and strategic location. With the catastrophic climate change which Trump does not believe in already arrived, the world’s largest island could be a rather shrewd investment. The Kingdom of Denmark has not yet responded to the proposal, nor Greenland’s fifty-six thousand residents.
Having legitimised literature two years prior and passing legislation in the Folketing to the effect a few weeks earlier, on this day in 1969 Denmark became the first country in the world to legalise pornography in all formats. Aside from restrictions put in place for the protection of children and animals from exploitation, people in Denmark have had unfettered access to porn (see also) for the past five decades, wagering that sunshine is the best disinfectant and people would have a healthier relationship with a subject that was not a social taboo.
Via Colossal, we make the acquaintance of the Copenhagen atelier PUTPUT, whose metaphysically dysfunctional everyday objects cause us to pause and meditate on form informing function and the degree of design, engineering and intentionality taken for granted that goes into what we use as tools and use as ornament. Much more to explore at the links above.
Though these allowances for cross-border commuters post the UK’s seemingly imminent departure from the European Union seem rather niche, we’re pretty confident that the ex-patriate community who live and work on opposite sides of the รresund/รresund strait that separates Denmark from Sweden is not quite the unique situation that it seems at first glance and illustrates how fraught and precarious that Brexit has been for UK citizens living on the continent. Swedish residents working Copenhagen will be allowed to keep their jobs and move from country to country without impediment and even change Danish jobs but no guarantees are extended for the right to seek employment elsewhere or in Sweden.
Under construction since the summer of 2016, the architects behind Urban Rigger—we learn via Plain Magazine—present an innovative concept to address the shortage of affordable student housing by creating floating dormitories along disused docklands in Copenhagen.
The potential for expanding sustainable dwelling places parallel to abandoned water transport infrastructure that line the world’s rivers and canals with extant but outmoded infrastructure is tremendous and would relieve a lot of pressure in places where space is already at a premium. Units, which would have applications for sheltering refugees as well, moored and unmoored as needed, are housed in upgraded shipping containers and include an array of amenities and harness power passively through solar panels and the passing current and tides. Be sure to visit the links above for a whole gallery of the floating dorm and a video documentary.
A couple days ago, the world marked International LEGO Day, inscribed on the calendar on the date when Godtfred Kirk Christiansen filed the American patent application for his product sixty years ago. GK Christiansen was the third son of the inventor and founder Ole Kirk Christiansen who began making wooden toys in his workshop in Billund, Denmark in 1932—before moving to plastic as a medium—and was the managing director of the company from 1950 to 1995. The company’s name and line of construction toys is from the Danish words leg godt—“play well.”
Specialising in installations that incorporate up-cycled materials, Danish artist Thomas Dambo and crew has since 2006 constructed more than thirty-five hundred bird houses in urban centres. Though the majority are concentrated in the artist’s home turf of the ARKEN museum campus outside of Copenhagen, the Happy City Birds project has built shelters in towns across Denmark and expanded abroad to include places such as Beirut and Berlin.
A preliminary but rather brilliant year-long trial in Denmark is demonstrating that parked electric vehicles can help to regulate the power grid. Recharging batteries overnight and during work hours can place stresses on utilities infrastructure and is already changing peak hours and demands but by keeping cars otherwise engaged and active players in their refuelling, the grid could selective reduce, increase or take back energy from the batteries (plus presumably store excess capacity) on this extended grid. As if this was not incentive enough in itself, the exchange—which is something I’m sure we’ll being taking for granted in the near future, can also earn some money for the vehicles owners paid out by the grid’s operators.
journeyman: a travelling itinerant gardener rents yards across the US and makes a living off of selling the produce
paper-towelling: celebrating a decade of Martha Stewart’s resolute bloggingThe only other quasi-precedential withdrawal from the European Union was in 1982 when after devolution and greater independence from metropolitan Denmark, Greenlanders held a plebiscite and by the same narrow margins (a fifty-two/forty-eight split) voted to leave.
The chief motivation to leave (a decision that suddenly reduced the landmass in the then fledgling European Community by about sixty percent) was the fishermen of Greenland being told how much they could catch and then sharing that quota with trawling powerhouses. Negotiations between Kรธbenhavn, Nuuk and Brussel took over three years, but the untried exit mechanism, Article 50 that came with the Treaty of Lisboa of 2007, was not yet in place and no things being equal in the parallels of recent times (in terms of complexity)—one can rest assured that the EU and the UK will reach a new, neighbourly deal in no time. Maybe this was one of those times that America tried to buy Greenland wholesale. I think it was around this time that the US Three and a half decades on, Greenland, wishing for greater leverage and protection to curb other manufacturing nations from flooding their domestic markets, is now contemplating returning to the EU.
For the four-hundredth anniversary of the death of playwright William Shakespeare, Kronsborg castle—the inspiration for Elsinore, where the tragedy of Hamlet was set, was open for an overnight stay for one lucky and devoted fan for the first time in a century.
The winning application was in the form of a clever to the Bard in iambic pentameter. Runners-up and local gentry were wined and dined earlier in the evening with a fancy banquet—and that would have sufficed for me since I don’t know about staying the night in such a haunted place. There are some pretty keen hotelier promotions happening lately, and we do trust that the couple slept soundly, but this opportunity strikes me like bedding-down in the head of van Gogh.
Growing up, I remember how my parents hung frightening Hieronymus Bosch miniatures in the living room. Far from finding it tortuous, abusive or nightmare-inducing, however, I always found myself fascinated with the detail of the little creatures and enjoyed making up stories about them.
I was excited to learn about this immersive exhibition, sponsored by Google’s Cultural Institute, not on Bosch himself but rather on one of the visionary artist’s important influences, Pieter Bruegel the Elder. This panorama, buffeted by the latest that virtual-reality technology can deliver, pulls one into the canvas of the 1562 Flemish masterpiece “The Fall of the Rebel Angels,” and makes the observer witness to archangel Michael’s expulsion of Lucifer, and that transfixing, psychedelic fall from grace from a privileged point of view. If you happen to visit the Belgian Royal Museums of Fine Arts, please let us know what it was like. Further, I was unaware of the internet giant’s artistic initiatives and would like to learn more about their projects as well.
