A true jewel that represents Denmark's greatest cultural heritage, in her contemporaneously often violent globe-sailing Viking sense --- her multicultural people -- Christiania is the most ethnically integrated place in this tiny land of 5 million. Christiania is also Denmark's 2nd most popular tourist attraction. It all began in 1971, when several hundred Vietnam War /environmental protesters, homeless youth and students -- seeking shelter from the storm of a tiny nation of great paradox in wealth -- squatted an 85-acre abandoned naval station between two canals in the heart of the Christianshavn borough of Copenhagen. Christianshavn is one of the places that King Christian IV beautified in the 16th century, modeling the architecture after seeing Amsterdam. It is now worth $billions. From out of the creative genius of the original settlers and those that would come later, military barracks were remodeled, homes were built from out of scrap, families who listened to the sound of different drummer nurtured children forth, and an egalitarian principle of no one having any special power succeeded in surviving 40 years of hot political debate and police efforts to normalize the community, or evict them. Or at least to stop the illegal but open marijuana/hash market in what¨s called, Pusher Street.
The section below - mostly filmed on August 3, 2011 - begins at Copenhagen City Hall Plaza (Rådhuspladsen) and meanders by bicycle into the heart of Freetown Christiania, often considered a natural paradise within the city. Some of the homes you will see here may evoke images of JRR Tolkien's "Hobbitville." In this video you will meet many people, and hear their feelings and opinions about the recent acceptance of a binding agreement with the government, which includes a below-market buy-out.
From 2004 to 2009, a very tense and often violent situation existed between the police and Christiania's residents, due to the Anders Fogh Rasmussen (now NATO Sec. General) government's efforts at "normalizing" the community, many say, mostly to make the property available to wealthy investors and developers, and to clean the Freetown of its open marijuana image in time for the COP-15 UN Climate Change Conference fiasco. The official reason for the Fogh years of violent police action on Christiania, aside from enforcing the law against the sale and use of marijuana, is to return an ancient ramparts and moat to its original historical theme. By that yardstick, then, Tivoli, the old amusement park across from City Hall would also be required to be torn down and returned to its heyday ramparts.
Oprah failed to understand the heart of Denmark when she visited here in 2009, and "wowed" the more affluent side of a paradoxical fairy tale written by an empirically flawed study that Danes are the happiest people on the planet. All fairy tales have their shadow side. More than even in 1971, many families are today being thrown to the streets for not having the resources to pay their rent. To many people, Christiania represents a cultural heritage that offers a solution to such issues.
Here in the 2nd part of this Christiania video documentary, A Bridge to Somewhere, you will see more of this wooded egalitarian community, including a conversation about legalizing marijuana to help disempower the recent gang violence in Copenhagen. At the end of that video, you will briefly meet Bent Lorentzen, sitting behind the keyboard and creating the score within some of the video sections.
Here is a short video by Bent Lorentzen of Denmark's national anthem in honor of her national bird, the mute swan.
by Bent Lorentzen, (c) 2011, all rights reserved
Lorentzen is also author to "Dragon's Moon," a saga of a young dragon seeking his place in a confusing world filled with antagonists and allies who never seem to be what they are. It came in 4th in the 2002 Dream Realm Awards
and
Krona, the Dragons of Nistala, a 2009 sequel that propels the reader into high adventure, war and love, as an extinction event and social collapse foreshadow the coming of humanity.
In 2002, Bent Lorentzen won the Ground Zero Literature prize for his short story, Passage, of a Cherokee shamanic response to the 9/11 mass-murder horror
Many of Lorentzen's cultural articles have been published by major publications, such as the World & I, on the Danish celebration of America's birth in the Rebild Hills (A Joyful Day), and the story of the 4th of July along the Gunpowder River north of Washington DC in A RIVER RUNS THROUGH THEM via the USIA under President Clinton.
Thanks, Bent, for beautiful videos of Christiania. I was unaware of the community and now would love to go and see it for myself. I enjoyed your
ReplyDeleteformat and the music at the end as well as the Irish singing.
So beautiful. I want to live in Christiana, seeing it made me smile. Thank you for the trip even though the fast part made me feel a little drunk. I love all the water running through everything and am sad that greed will also wreck this beautiful place.
ReplyDeleteJust so there are no misunderstandings, since cannabis is not what I partake in, I would generally not recommend to someone that they smoke marijuana. People with pre-existing psychoses can sometimes run into a serious problem just with one joint, especially with today's cross-polinated species of skunk, which has a high THC level. Just like an alcoholic in the waiting becomes that with one drink. But the actual impact on society from alcohol is far far worse than anything related to cannabis.
ReplyDeleteAnd addictive behaviors that begin as pleasure seeking can sometimes turn into self-destructive behavioral patterns (though cannabis is much less prone to inculcating addictions), in the 1970's, as a college student when I did occasionally share in cannabis, my life was very much enriched by the social interactions that occurred around the substance. Later, in studying anthropology with a Navajo shaman and professor, I learned some deeper reasons for why we may engage in mind altering substances, no different in many ways, than yoga or meditation or going to a religious ceremony, like a mass, and seeking to find a better and more balanced sense of one's own deeper self.
Just as I would not judge anyone who finds enjoyment in a glass of wine, a cigarette, cup of morning coffee, some Grey Earl tea or some hash, why should we with cannabis? All these items are psychotropics and biochemically interact with the brain's pleasure/reward system, helps people relax, stay awake, sometimes just function, and cannabis has empirically been proven to help with a whole range of organic pain and suffering.
The real problem occurs, in my opinion, when we begin criminalizing substances, engendering the nefarious, often very violent underground and competitive networks that then provide the illegal market for the demand... and that demand will always be there; it's probably the 2nd oldest market on the planet, next to prostitution
I enjoyed all these docu videos very much, Bent. The time lapse was very cool and perhaps you could use it more in the journey sections as a way to deal with ubiquitous camera shake. When you stop and talk to people, or show images of the landscape through which you are travelling, buildings, lakes, the landscape of your journey to and in Christiana it's nice to see what you see. We get a real sense of the place, visiting on an afternoon excursion like this. It has a sense of intimacy, and I like both hearing the original track in Danish (of which I cannot understand a word, but the cadences are lovely) and reading your translations on screen. And then, as a cultural anthropologist, you hone in really on one major issue around drugs, and that gives the videos a good focus. It's an important issue. One where black market Capitalism shows its most vicious face in underworld gangs, drug warfare, and the tragedies of addiction. I would agree with you that pot or hash has been incorrectly and unfairly labelled as a hard drug and in many countries legislation is finally beginning to reflect this. Personally, while I drink strong coffee in the morning, and perhaps a small glass of red wine in the late evening, that's about it for my habits, I don't smoke cigarettes anymore, and never really enjoyed the high of marijuana, which I found great for listening to music, but further inhibited me in my shyness. But I absolutely feel that for many people it is not only medicinally beneficial -it has pain-relieving applications and many suffering with cancer can get prescriptions for medical marajuana in Canada- but psychologically calming. Good videos, that raise important issues. Thank you for all the work these have been, including losing many hours of editing last week, and for sharing. I LOVED your music! You are a talented musician, as well!
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ReplyDeleteWell, Bent - this is an amazing tour - going in reverse order here - of the beauty of the mute swan - I assume this bird is the national bird of Denmark because of HCA's famous story? We get a few swans as migrants from time to time, mostly south of where I am, such as Quincy or Plymouth.
ReplyDeleteI am so grateful to you for the lessons in history and culture, and of the difficulties faced in Denmark. Truly, America believes in the European fairy tale, especially regarding Scandinavia. I am also pleased to see so much footage of Christiana, for often I think of my afternoon there in 71, when it was just beginning, and how much like Montreal I thought it looked. When I returned to Montreal, around the Prince Arthur area from McGill to St. Laurent, indeed there were a lot of similarities. What has been happening with Christiana is so hurtful and I hope it will even out. MA and several states have decriminalized pot and several others have medical pot. The trend toward absolute legalization is coming, and I am glad.
It just pains me so much that TPTB in Denmark are... as they are... and I thank you very much. I hope that this world will continue to envelop greater openness as we share stories globally. The despots in their fingerlands will shrink when people's eyes are opened.
I am so glad you enjoyed it, Kathryn. Since we've both experienced Montreal and Denmark at about the same historical time, yes, you are absolutely right.
DeleteI guess all societies on the planet create a mythical image of themselves, now so abused in abusive corporate governments' spin.
I think of the recent article in the New York Times, where a previous executive for the Apple corporation stated that they've known for years about slave-like abusive and dangerous workers conditions in the Chinese factories that manufacture computers and the I-Pad... and said something like, it makes money and that's why Apple turns a blind eye.
Yes, the corporatism that lets people believe it is always okay to abuse people so others can get rich off their bones, literally, is a tragic fact throughout history. I think the employment laws in the US, which were not so bad by the 70s (after about 100 years of much overhaul) seriously need revisiting, since many employers now get around the full-time employees legislation by either hiring offshore or by hiring contract employees, neither of which fall under trad laws.
DeleteThe NYT stories about the abuses is horrible. Yet, I will be a Mac/iPhone user as soon as I can.
This makes me even sadder now, reading it again. I loved Christiana so much because it reminded me of Montreal around Prince Arthur and St. Denis, but I was imposing my ideals of a free world upon a different world. So much of the world makes me sad.
DeleteI wish I had gone into Christiana while I lived in Denmark.
ReplyDeleteSo much of the world makes me sad. Christiana makes me sad and I had such great hopes for it when I was there, right when it started. I had assumed it was like Montreal's Prince Arthur and St. Denis, but no....
ReplyDelete