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.
