Danish History Research Articles

High-stakes educational testing and democracy – antagonistic or symbiotic relationship?

This article argues that high-stakes educational testing, along with the attendant questions of power, education access, education management and social selection, cannot be considered in isolation from society at large. Thus, high-stakes testing practices bear numerous implications for democratic conditions in society. For decades, advocates of high-stakes educational testing have argued that testing would result in meritocracy, ensuring that everyone would be afforded the same opportunities to find success in adulthood. Examined from a critical perspective, however, we learn that testing is also extremely well designed as a bulwark against opposing or alternative outlooks and opinions, because testing is a complex tool requiring highly specialised knowledge to administer effectively. This article sets out to investigate the relation between high-stakes educational testing and democracy drawn from the experiences of 20th-century high-stakes educational testing practices in the Danish history of education. Among other things, the article concludes that a combination of different evaluation technologies – some formative and some summative – might be the safest way to go from a democratic perspective.

West Indian women in Danish popular fiction

This paper examines nationalist nostalgia for Denmark's colonial period in the Caribbean through the lens of popular women's fiction. Empirical accounts of this period written by Danish historians have, to a limited extent, undergone such contrapuntal examinations. But these accounts assume so little discursive space in Danish history books that it seems unlikely that they are Danes' primary source of knowledge about the Danish West Indies (1672–1917). More compelling sources are the popular culture narratives that have circulated since Denmark's thwarted attempt to sell the islands to the USA in 1902. Because popular women's fiction tends to depict women's subjective experience rather than posit an empirical reality, its role in reproducing knowledge about Denmark's colonial history, and in constructing its national identity, has never been examined. Such a reading reveals Denmark's continuing struggle with symbolic miscegenation nearly a century after she was forced to give up her Caribbean colonies.

ESKE, NATURLIGVIS! Om økopoesi og naturerotik i Eske K. Mathiesens økoerotiske lyrik

Martin Gregersen & Tobias Skiveren: “ESKE, NATURALLY! On Ecopoetry and Eroticism of Nature in the Ecoerotic Poetry of Eske K. Mathiesen”Within Danish literary history, the works of Eske K. Mathiesen have long been flying under the radar. This neglect is possibly due to the fact that the close attention to nature and immediate environment displayed in these writings is generally conceived as anachronistic when contextualized within a hypermodern, technological, and globalized age, such as the one we are currently part of. However, the current climate crisis changes this. Looking through the optics of ecocritisicm, this article examines the view on nature in the lyrical work of Eske K. Mathiesen in relation to existing categories of literary history. By various readings of representative poems, this article argues that his work distinguishes itself by viewing nature through the eyes of both ecology and erotics. In other words, the lyrical work of Eske K. Mathiesen can be categorized as both eco- and erotic poetry, however, as this article suggests, it is more accurate to fuse the two and employ a concept of ecoerotic poetry.

From Breaking News to Old News

This article presents a part of Danish church history which has previously suffered from a lack of attention: The story of homosexual pastors in Denmark. I want to show how the discussion on homosexuality and ministry ran in Denmark in the 1970's and 1980's and how homosexual pastors were integrated into the ELCD. Moreover, I will analyse this discussion material from the perspective of the German Pfarrhaustradition and point to the civil side of the Lutheran understanding of ministry – marriage and household – as a crucial reason why homosexual pastors, as well as unmarried heterosexual pastors, have been considered a theological problem. Finally, I will compare the image of the pastor in the Lutheran Pfarrhaustradition with a Catholic understanding of ministry and suggest that both set the pastor apart from the world through regulation of relationships and sexuality.

Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Familial Blessings: Historical Abruptions

Epigraphs from William Roper’s “Life of Sir Thomas More” represent rituals of familial blessing in transition from the feudal to the early modern. They exemplify Shakespeare’s complex employment of the ritual in Hamlet and throughout his plays from the farcical to the serene. The “double blessing” that Polonius gives Laertes shows this ritual comically, as do those of earlier sons Launce and Launcelot in The Two Gentlemen of Verona and The Merchant of Venice; All’s Well That Ends Well renders it confusingly in feudal transition into a new age. King Lear offers it in the peaceful reconciliation of father and daughter, as, also tragically, does the final action between Gertrude and Hamlet when she wipes his forehead, fulfilling his promise that “when you are desirous to be blessed, / I’ll blessing beg of you.” The blessing of marriage between Hamlet and Ophelia exposes another abruption between the historical conception of political marriage argued by Polonius and Laertes and marriages of mutuality aborted by the adulterous and murderous one of Gertrude and Claudius. Hamlet is structured on the Danish history of Old Hamlet/Old Fortinbras abrupted by that of Young Hamlet/Young Fortinbras—with Hamlet blessed neither to leave home nor to marry.

Educational testing as an accountability measure: drawing on twentieth-century Danish history of education experiences

This article reveals perspectives based on experiences from twentieth-century Danish educational history by outlining contemporary, test-based accountability regime characteristics and their implications for education policy. The article introduces one such characteristic, followed by an empirical analysis of the origins and impacts of test-based accountability measures applying both top-down and bottom-up perspectives.These historical perspectives offer the opportunity to gain a fuller understanding of this contemporary accountability concept and its potential, appeal and implications for continued use in contemporary educational settings. Accountability measures and practices serve as a way to govern schools; by analysing the history of accountability as the concept has been practised in the education sphere, the article will discuss both pros and cons of such a methodology, particularly as it relates to contemporary education governance.

The Danish School of Interior Architecture: A Visionary Functionalist, a Visionary Aesthete, and their Women Students1

Recently there has been a growing international interest in the history of interior design. Danish design owes much of its international renown to a few prominent architects and their iconic products. One of them was Finn Juhl, who earned an international reputation mainly through his elegant furniture design. However, an important aspect of his work has received virtually no attention: his seminal work as a visionary teacher and leader at the school for professional interior design in Copenhagen in the 1940s and 1950s. Harald Willerup, architect as well, and Juhl's equally visionary predecessor, had initiated this work in 1934, but has remained largely unknown. This article offers a historiographical mapping of the professional education of Danish interior designers in the period from 1934 to 1955—a subject, which has so far remained unexposed. Despite the fact that the leading figures and pioneers of the education of interior design were men, the students were almost exclusively women. The article seeks to explain this and to explain the consequences for the general image of the profession. The research into the development of interior design education in Denmark shows how the change of leadership from Willerup to Juhl resulted in a shift in the educational focus from functional and social issues toward a greater focus on aesthetics. The fact remains, however, that this work was informed by prevalent functionalist ideas at the time. A particularly fascinating aspect of the Danish history of interior design education is the hard struggle its pioneers had to fight cultural prejudice and conventional thinking.

Under the Danish Cross: flagging Danishness in the years around World War II

This article explores the significance of the Danish flag in the formation of national identities during World War II and the immediate post-war period. During this dark and tumultuous period of Danish history, the flag was claimed by different groups with very different agendas, which in turn engendered differing conceptions of Denmark and Danishness. Three different themes are investigated in the article. The first regards the flag as a symbol of national continuity and endurance. From this angle, the flag functioned as a living, corporeal piece of history, which signalled that old Denmark would prevail, in spite of the crisis at hand. The second theme investigates the coupling of the flag with democracy during the 1943 elections. This event was hailed by the government as a major national celebration, with nationwide flagging for the democratic values of Denmark. At the same time, the elections were criticized as ‘un-national’, both by home-grown Nazis and the resistance movement. The third section dwells on the notion of martyrdom for the flag. This form of Danishness was not connected to peace-loving democracy, but woven into a martial discourse of sacrifice, honour and masculine heroism. Public worship of martyrdom was particularly intense in the early post-war era, when the flag was used to link ordinary Danes to the fallen heroes of the resistance movement. Thus, it was not the democratic spirit of 1943 that was celebrated after Liberation, but the martyrdom of fallen male resistance fighters, whose blood was evoked as the foundation of the re-born nation. The national memory of post-war Denmark, thereby, was based on the notion of a united people, who had stood firm and even been willing to die for the honour of their ancient flag.

This Time as Romantic Fiction: Monarchism and Peasant Freedom in the Historical Literature of B. S. Ingemann 1824–1836

This article examines the relationship between the monarchy and the people as represented by one of the foremost Danish Romantics, the poet B. S. Ingemann (1789–1862), in the historical literature he published in the years when Ingemann wrote his Danish history, the so-called ‘myth of an original peasant’s freedom’, is also inherent in Ingemann’s novels and poems. Drawing on the literature of the Danish historian Peter Frederik Suhm, Ingemann embraces and ‘recycles’ the idea that historically an ancient constitution existen in Denmark to ensure that the peasant was on equal terms with the nobility and the clergy. No decision could be made without the consent of the commonality. The article stresses that this idea had an enormous impact on Danish society, both as a cultural indicator and as an actual political tool, not least in the crucial years following the French Revolution.

Positioning in the Cold War – Swedish and Danish History Textbooks and the Totalitarianism Doctrine. Historical Cultures in Comparison

The Nordic countries Sweden and Denmark have a long and intertwined history. The Second World War, though, formed different experiences in the two countries that led to diverging paths in the Cold War. Denmark became a member of North Atlantic Treaty Organization, while Sweden stayed non-aligned. Thus, it can be assumed that Denmark was more likely to adopt Western foreign policies and doctrines than Sweden. Or was it? On a programmatic political level this may have been the case, but what about cultural perceptions developed in Swedish and Danish ‘minds of men’? Is there a tension between les évenéments and les longues durées? The underlying assumption in this article is that there is a contradiction and a tension between the programmatic political level and historically-inherited enemy images, and that this tension may be studied through the concept of totalitarianism and its position in the historical cultures of Sweden and Denmark in the post-war era. The totalitarianism doctrine was one of the main ideological weapons during the Cold War, serving as a basis for the Truman doctrine. It implies that Nazism and Soviet communism shared common features and may be subsumed under the same label. But would a Dane find it reasonable to view the Red Army, which belonged to the Allies which liberated his or her country, as of ‘the same kind’ as the German occupants? And would it make sense to a Swede to stay neutral to Soviet Russia, the historical enemy? The one who for a Swede is ‘the other’ might for a Dane appear as a historical ally. The empirical sources are history textbooks for senior secondary school students, studied as artefacts of national historical cultures.

The international space of the Danish testing community in the interwar years

The focus of this article is to draw attention to the presence and importance of travelling ideas, knowledge, and practices in Danish history of educational testing. The article introduces and employs a spatial methodological approach in relation to the connections between the international testing community and the emerging Danish practice of intelligence testing in the interwar years. The article represents a contribution to an investigation of the social and cultural exchange of educational ideas between the Anglo-Saxon world and Scandinavia, in general, and Denmark in particular. Moreover, the article argues for the positive gains of drawing on a spatial frame of interpretation when dealing with national educational history.

Hal Koch: Kirkehistoriker – demokrat – brobygger

: On May 25, 2012 Tine Reeh defended her doctoral thesis at the University of Copenhagen on the Danish church historian, Hal Koch (1904-1963). Koch was an important fi gure in modern Danish history, not only as a theologian, but also as a pioneering innovator in adult education and nation-building during the Nazi occupation of Denmark. I start out paying tribute to Tine Reeh’s accomplishments, not least for presenting a full-scale analysis of Hal Koch within the general framework of his time. At the same time some viewpoints in her account are questioned. Tine Reeh maintains that the German dialectical theology and its Danish parallel, Tidehverv, had a particular impact on Koch. She presents a detailed picture of Koch’s monographs on Origen, on the relationship between church and state in medieval Denmark, and on Grundtvig, seen in interaction with Koch’s position as Lutheran theologian and preacher. The analysis of Koch’s activity during the years of German occupation has rightly been given particular attention. Yet, it is misleading to perceive 1945 as the year of conclusion. In the post-war period Koch presented several examples of a remarkable reorientation. Accordingly it is more appropriate to consider him a bridge-builder between church and society than to push him into the narrow confi nes of academic school theology.

It has not been—it is. The signaletic transformation of photography

Inspired by the concept of “the signaletic,” this article proposes a new understanding of photography as a social and performative device related to everyday life, to communication, and to presence. Today photography is a ubiquitous, social activity to a much larger extent than before the digital revolution and the introduction of the Internet, creating relational situations and communication as well as new affective involvements between human bodies and the photographic, media-convergent technologies. In the light of this epistemological change, the medium of photography demands a theoretical reformulation, and contemporary art works can help us articulate “the signaletic paradigm” in photography. To illustrate this, the article includes an analysis of Christian Marclay's prize winning “The Clock” and David Claerbout's “Sections of a Happy Moment”. It is my argument that although the traditional photography, such as the early photography theories by Bazin and Barthes have described, confirmed “what-has-been” (Barthes) and fulfilled a “mumification desire” (Bazin), the new digital practices at the Internet show “what-is-going-on” (presence) and thereby rather fulfills the user's existential desire to “feel time.”Mette Sandbye currently researches the relationship between amateur photography and collective history since the 1960s. She was the editor of the first Danish history of photography (Dansk Fotografihistorie, 2004), and she has published numerous books and articles on contemporary art photography and photography as part of the visual culture.

Hal Kochs "Jeg anklager Rigsdagen". En efterkrigstidsdebat i perspektiv

Martin Ejsing Christensen: “Hal Koch’s Jeg anklager Rigsdagen: A Post Second World War Debate in Perspective”In his 1947 book Jeg anklager Rigsdagen [I accuse the parliament], the Danish theologian and public commentator Hal Koch vehemently condemned the treatment of the so-called collaborators in the aftermath of the German occupation of Denmark. Today Hal Koch’s moral condemnation and its presupposed historical analysis have been lauded by several historians as the moral and historical truth about the “Retsopgør”,the transitional justice of the postwar period. This article examines this received view by placing Hal Koch’s book in its contemporary setting through an analysis of newspaper reviews of the book. Combined with the existing knowledge about the political conditions in Denmark immediately after the Second World War, this leads to the conclusion that Hal Koch’s and today’s moral condemnation of the “Retsopgør” fails to take into account some of the political circumstances obtaining at the time. As a consequence, this moral condemnation may be seen as a symptom of a more general moralizing attitude today towards the Second World War in Danish history.

Danish auroral science history

Abstract. Danish auroral science history begins with the early auroral observations made by the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe during the years from 1582 to 1601 preceding the Maunder minimum in solar activity. Included are also the brilliant observations made by another astronomer, Ole Rømer, from Copenhagen in 1707, as well as the early auroral observations made from Greenland by missionaries during the 18th and 19th centuries. The relations between auroras and geomagnetic variations were analysed by H. C. Ørsted, who also played a vital role in the development of Danish meteorology that came to include comprehensive auroral observations from Denmark, Iceland and Greenland as well as auroral and geomagnetic research. The very important auroral investigations made by Sophus Tromholt are outlined. His analysis from 1880 of auroral observations from Greenland prepared for the significant contributions from the Danish Meteorological Institute, DMI, (founded in 1872) to the first International Polar Year 1882/83, where an expedition headed by Adam Paulsen was sent to Greenland to conduct auroral and geomagnetic observations. Paulsen's analyses of the collected data gave many important results but also raised many new questions that gave rise to auroral expeditions to Iceland in 1899 to 1900 and to Finland in 1900 to 1901. Among the results from these expeditions were 26 unique paintings of the auroras made by the artist painter, Harald Moltke. The expedition to Finland was headed by Dan la Cour, who later as director of the DMI came to be in charge of the comprehensive international geomagnetic and auroral observations made during the Second International Polar Year in 1932/33. Finally, the article describes the important investigations made by Knud Lassen during, among others, the International Geophysical Year 1957/58 and during the International Quiet Sun Year (IQSY) in 1964/65. With his leadership the auroral and geomagnetic research at DMI reached a high international level that came to be the background for the first Danish satellite, Ørsted, successfully launched in 1999 and still in operation.

Winds & Words: a look at Danish history & perfecting presentations [Book Reviews

Wind Power -- The Danish Way (Christensen, B., Ed.) provides an interesting and informative account of the long history of wind power in Denmark. Its 88 pages include many vintage and modern photographs and illustrations that effectively supplement the text.

Between the City and the Rural: Negotiating Place and Identity in a Danish Suburban Housing Area

Usually, Danish suburban history is told as a journey towards light, airy, green spaces. However, suburban housing areas can be seen in the context of processes of urbanization, where the boundary between urban and rural is dissolving. What does this mean for residential identities? This article explores residential identities in a new housing area in the metropolitan region of greater Copenhagen in this context, based on a qualitative study drawing on qualitative interviews and photos taken by residents. It is argued that identity should be understood through notions of reflexive identity, as well as the concepts of elective belonging and the aesthetic. In a qualitative study with residents, it is shown how multiple and varied practices and stories are generated. In residents' articulation of identity in terms of centre‐periphery relations, this was re‐configured not as a linear relationship of a move from urban to non‐urban areas (although it was also expressed as this), but as generating various practices. Residents' experiences and negotiations emerged under the following themes: between the aesthetic and the pragmatic, being connected or suburban, and simulated or authentic nature. The article also shows that not all residents use such reflexivity, suggesting that it may be unevenly distributed.

Prologue: Globalization, Regionalism, Nationalism: Danish Idiosyncrasy

Outward loss, inward gain. [1] What justifies a volume specifically devoted to Danish sport history in its exchange with general European trends in the sphere of sport? Denmark is a small nation, b...

Encountering hysteria: doctors' and patients' perspectives on hysteria in Denmark, 1875—1918

The history of hysteria stretches over several millennia and contains a plethora of different understandings and interpretations. This paper focuses on a central part of its Danish history, from the last decades of the nineteenth-century 'age of nervousness' until the end of World War I. It is argued that the understanding and negotiation of hysteria and its explanations took place in a complex interaction between doctors and their patients. Whereas the psychiatrists during this period moved towards an understanding of hysteria as a functional disorder, the patients, of whom approximately one-third were male, maintained that their illness was of somatic origin, and closely related to social, economic and working conditions.

The ‘Nordic Latinos’ meet the ‘Mountain Primates’: the press coverage of football matches between Norway and Denmark, 2002 and 2003

The article examines the way aspects of Norwegian and Danish history, culture, society and development were articulated in the newspaper coverage of the football matches between Norway and Denmark in 2002 and 2003. The matches gave rise to a verbal war of rivalry between the two countries, drawing on colonial discourse, on popular stereotypes of the neighbouring country and of the playing style of their national team. The text chiefly draws inspiration from theories regarding stereotypes of national character in sports reporting. The debate in both countries sought to represent the home country as modern both in terms of culture and on the football field, and by consequence represented the other team and its country as conservative and as a relic of the past.