Shake in your boots, Russian soldiers – I’m prepared to die for Denmark
Would you die for your country? In a recent interview with Danish finance daily Børsen, prime minister Mette Frederiksen said that all Danes should be ready to do so. Naturally, this prompted much discussion in the media but it was a column in the newspaper Politiken, from Danish college student Nicolai La Cour, that got me thinking.
La Cour described how his 18 years thus far have been characterised by crises and that he saw nothing of the old order that was worth fighting to preserve. I get it. These are heavy times. And I am assuming that La Cour doesn’t have a highly temperamental robot lawnmower to deal with.
But he did make me wonder whether or not I would die for my country. What even was “my country”? I have lived in Denmark for nearly half my life but was raised and programmed in the UK, and have passports to both. What on earth would I do if the long-simmering dispute over who invented Lego were to take a violent turn?
In the 1990s, late British conservative politician Norman Tebbit came up with something that he called the “cricket test” to ascertain where immigrants’ loyalties lay: to their country of origin or to the UK. In Tebbit’s view, English people with Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi or West Indian heritage should support the England cricket team when it plays against those countries. If not, they were traitors to their new homeland.
To me, Tebbit’s test remains a reductive, ignorant and, not least, unpoetic and deeply boring stance. Of course, immigrants should respect the laws and be sensitive to the cultural norms of their new home. I am not advocating multiculturalism. When you move to a country, you do your best to behave in an appropriate manner and I like to think that I can keep a straight face when confronted by pretty much everything Denmark can throw at me (as long as I don’t have to eat curry-pickled herring or listen to the inexplicably popular Danish novelty band Shu-bi-dua).
The cricket test is not particularly useful in a Danish context anyway. Danes view the sport as the English might view elephant polo or rodeo: a wilfully obtuse pursuit with little to offer them. But when England plays Denmark at football, I support England. And yet I can’t imagine any circumstances in which I would die for England, seeing as I don’t live there and probably never will again. So that leaves Denmark.
Should the Russians sweep across Zealand, I would stand my best chance of delaying their progress, if only for a couple of minutes, by offering them some baked goods. But I have made a decision to be ready at my front door, braced with a gardening fork, sure in the knowledge that the last thing I saw in life would be the face of a mildly irritated Russian soldier before he put a bullet through my head.
I was as surprised by this realisation as anyone who knows me would be. Why would I, a noted coward, lay down my life for Denmark? Because I believe that it is the immigrant’s duty. Denmark has given me everything and continues to represent so much of what I admire in a democratic society. And because La Cour is wrong: some of the old ways are worth fighting – and, yes, dying – for.
Michael Booth is Monocle’s Copenhagen correspondent. For more opinions and insights, subscribe to Monocle today.
