The Danish Straights

This week, President Ilves and Proua Evelin will jet off to Copenhagen to spend some luxury time in the Danish capital on an official visit.

When I lived in Denmark six years ago, the tabloids were often ablaze with steamy photos of Danish royalty, along with some extra spicy stories on the personal lives of the royalty in the other Scandinavian kingdoms, ie. “Prince Haakon of Norge and Prince Frederik of Danmark got juiced on a booze cruise between Oslo and København last week.”

It is for this reason that I am delighted that Estonia’s president will get to visit with Hendes Majestæt Dronningen Margarethe II, the queen of Taani, during his visit. Ilves and others in the Estonian foreign ministry have made it a point to push Estonia’s Scandinavian ties, although for Danes, Finland, let alone Estonia, seems labyrinthine and foreign — populated by Finnic tribe people who like to get naked and whip themselves with birch branches.

Let’s make no mistake here though, Danes and Estonians are both part of the pagan, vodka belt of northern Europe. While Estonians perhaps have more in common with the Icelanders and Finns in this regard — a culture built more on subsistence, rather than ordered monarchy as they had/have in Sweden and Denmark — the truth is that Danes are perhaps even more pagan than Estonians.

What do I mean by that? I mean that Estonia, Finland, and yes, also Iceland too, have national cultures built on historic epics and folk cultures – sagas, kalevala, kalevipoeg and ruhno songs — where as Swedish and Danish cultures, indeed, Scandinavian-ness, has more of an imperial face meaning 1) multiculturalism adopted to accommodate rule over various provinces; 2) public space shaped to reinforce legitimacy of monarchy – royal parks, societies, institutions, etc.

Despite this, the pagan edge is still strong in Denmark, and it rears its ugly head every time booze is allowed to flow freely, i.e. every night. I once attended a party in Roskilde where, presumably after a pig roast, the poor animal’s head was left rotting on a path in the center of the university complex. The tender animal lover in me decided that a pig’s head belonged someplace more discrete, like under a bush. It took a great deal of courage to pick that sucker up by its ear and move it. The Danes might have played naked co-ed football with it later for all I know while listening to electronic music.

That’s Denmark at the pagan level, but as far as we know, pig roasts and Tuborg consumption are not in the cards for Härra Ilves. Instead it will be open-faced sandwiches, coffee, sugar cookies, little mermaids, Dannebrog (no doubt the subject of a high-brow Estonian-Danish joke at some opportune moment) and Scandinavian royalty at its finest.

Ilves will be talking about Nordic-Baltic integration, NATO, and the European Union. Ilves is a great example that if you believe in something enough you can become it. Of all the leaders in Europe he is one of the few, and American-educated at that, that seems the most generically “European”. I'd also put Sarkozy in that box, as French as he is. Gordon Brown though looks like a character from Monty Python's Flying Circus, specifically this character.

Like so much discourse in the nordic countries, there is a dull rhythm to talks over institutions that center around defense cooperation (sending Danish experts to teach in the Baltic Defense College) or economic cooperation (creating more Danish-owned, Estonian-powered IT hybrids like Skype).

It is important though. Despite rampaging anarchists or pissed off rioters, Danes and Estonians have created societies that some hope to emulate. Whether it is through their ‘free healthcare’ or ‘wired cities’, both Taani and Eesti use their positions — small, entrepreneurial, educated — to create progressive policies.

These are the kinds of things Ilves will be talking about while munching on smørrebrød.I have no doubt that he will get along fine with the Danish straights.