„We live in the most important time that Denmark has experienced since the Reformation. There has not been this much movement for three centuries. People against the King, Slesvigholsteners, Holstenlaueners, Scandinavians, Friends of the Monarchy, French-minded, Nordic-minded, liberals, royalists, church conservatives and advocates of freedom, all standing against each other. No other land of Denmark’s size would be likely to show so many sharp antagonisms.” (Steven M Borish: Land of the Living, p156)
This is an excerpt from a letter written by a student in Copenhagen to his brother at Christmas in 1840, which sounds eerily familiar, making it easy to picture what that era must have been like.
I revisit this passage whenever I feel that our country’s future is growing increasingly bleak, that hardly anyone is left who can truly understand one another – and understanding is really the point, because people live in such different worlds, with different values, with a rewritten past, a dreamed present and a future, that they are unable to listen to each other and hear each other beyond the well-worn slogans of their respective groups.
It is reassuring to know that this is the period when the Danish ‘golden age’ began. Not in a material sense, but as a shift toward societal renewal. After all, this era laid the foundation for the Danish democracy we know today, and a lot is owed to Grundtvig and his followers.
This is how Grundtvig remembered this time:“ Denmark bowed under and sank down into a ten years time so deep in destitution and despondency, so deep in powerlessness and indifference, that I cannot think myself back to the years between 1820 and 1830 without feeling a certain horror.” (Steven M Borish: Land of the Living, p157)
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
(This entry was first published in Hungarian only on blog.hu-n on Sep 7, 2014.)
