Copenhagen's Multicultural Heritage - Christiania

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.

Copenhagen's Multicultural Heritage by Bicycle - Part One

This article is the first in a series of video-documentaries which will chronicle the multicultural heritage and treasures in Denmark.

It will mostly be done by bicycle in the Danish spirit of reducing one's energy footprint on the planet. On May 06, 2011, this is how CNN described Copenhagen's bicycle-friendly infrastructure:

"In the Danish capital, around a third of the workforce gets to the office by bike. By some estimates, that's more than a million kilometers pedaled every day.

For an alternative and truly bike-friendly urban experience, check out Christiania, a neighborhood of 850 that, in addition to setting up a semi-independent government and decriminalizing trade in cannabis, has banned cars."

I have already shot the first set of HD videos on Christiania, with many interviews on a broad range of issues, with artistic Hobbitville homes rising from the background in this calm forested hollow virtually in the heart of frenetic Copenhagen.

As soon as an issue with the Samsung camera's built-in software gets sorted out, then that and much more will come to this Danish American Newsmedia Enterprise blog set.

The video-article below takes us to Denmark's Parliamentary (Folketinget) castle, known as Christiansborg on Slotsholmen, and the drama that occurred as I swung the bicycle into Slotspladsen (Castle Plaza) and began doing what comes professionally natural to me.

Beneath the video you will find a couple of paragraphs that were edited into the text track of the video, but which the Samsung software crashed before I could edit it into something more viewer friendly. I deeply apologize for that.

So sit back and enjoy 4 and a half minutes of deep beauty, including Denmark's Constitutional hallmark of Ytringsfrihed (freedom of expression)

Title text that goes by too fast:
Christiansborg sits on Slotsholmen (Castle Island), and includes several buildings - including the one before you - which house parliament, the Prime Ministry and Denmark's Supreme Court. Until 1794, it also served at the royal residence and stables.

In the basement lie the ruins of the original castle, built around 1170. Because church and state were functionaries of each other then, King Valdemar the Great asked bishop Absalon to go to the port that soon would be called Copenhagen (Port of Trade), and militarily secure the mercantile trade that had begun to flourish against pirates from the Baltic and other threats.

Over the centuries Slotsholmen has changed character due to war and other issues

Text scrolling too fast which translates the sign:
Every gun that is manufactured, battleship that is set to sea, and missile that is launched steals from those who hunger and have no food and from those who freeze and have no clothes. The world doesn't just use money for weapons, it uses the sweat of our workers, the talents of our scientists and our children's hope.

Closing text that scrolls too fast:
I am now cycling into the area where most people enter Parliament, which in Danish is called Folketinget It's an old word that describes how in ancient Viking times, people gathered around a stone or tree, to work out problems. When arrived here, 2 young female Danish security guards asked me to stop filming.
"Why?"
"Because our politicians don't want you to."
"They don't want me to film the outside of the building? What about tourists with their Smartphones?"
"Well, we can't control that, but we do ask that you not film the facade."
"OK," I said, "but that sounds like the Taliban we are fighting, and I'm going to mention that at Facebook."
"We wish you wouldn't do that."
"Don't we sometimes become that which we fight?"

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.